Contemporary Artists Working Outside the City

This book reflects on the motivations of creative practitioners who have moved out of cities from the mid-1960s onwards to establish creative homesteads. The book focuses on desert exile painter Agnes Martin, radical filmmaker and gardener Derek Jarman, and iconoclastic conceptual artist Chris Burden, detailing their connections to the cities they had left behind (New York, London, Los Angeles).

Sarah Lowndes also examines how the rise of digital technologies has made it more possible for artists to live and work outside the major art centres, especially given the rising cost of living in London, Berlin, and New York. Contemporary Artists Working Outside the City focuses on three peripheral creative centres: the seaside town of Hastings, England, the midsized metro of Leipzig, Germany, and post-industrial Detroit, USA.