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Award winning author Tom McCarthy is in conversation with renowned artist Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press on his work and the ideas behind his selection for‘Empty House of the Stare’ ,the most recent in the ”la Caixa” Collection of Contemporary Art displays. Known for their narrative interweaving of violence, technology and mediation, McCarthy’s novels have been translated into more than twenty languages and adapted for cinema and theatre. His interlocutor, Banner, has exhibited internationally, and her work encompasses sculpture, drawing, installation and publishing.
Tom McCarthy (Stirling, 1969) is a novelist whose work has been translated into more than twenty languages. His first novel, Remainder, won the 2008 Believer Book Award and was recently adapted for the cinema. His third, C, was a 2010 Booker Prize finalist, as was his fourth, Satin Island, in 2015. McCarthy is also author of the study Tintin and the Secret of Literature, and of the essay collection Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish. He contributes regularly to publications such as The New York Times, The London Review of Books, Harper’s and Artforum. In 2013 he was awarded the inaugural Windham Campbell Prize for Fiction by Yale University. He is currently a Fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme.
Fiona Banner often works under the moniker of The Vanity Press. She established the imprint in 1997, with her seminal book The Nam. Since then she has published many works, some in the form of books, some sculptural, some performance based. In 2009 she issued herself an ISBN number and registered herself as a publication under her own name. Humour, conflict and language are at the core of her work.
She first became known for her “wordscapes” – often heroically proportioned works that capture in her own words films, from war blockbusters to porn. She often works with the “nude”, transcribing the human form into category-defying prose. Sometimes she repurposes military aircraft to brutal, sensual, and comedic ends.
