The book I have consumed is Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction by Julian Stallabrass – 2004, Oxford University Press Inc., New York. Within this text, many ideas are discussed with reference to Contemporary artists and their impact from certain external factors. On page 7 Stallabrass writes ‘postmodernism was meant to have swept such concerns [of avant-garde activity] aside, challenging the category of high art itself, or at least delighting in its pollution by myriad cultural forms.’ In other words, Stallabrass discusses the ideals of cultural and contextual influence within artwork as being the shift that postmodernism in the early 1970s was to take.

Stallabrass takes a Historical approach to the development of art mediums, concepts and movements, for example, on page 16 ‘as Julie H. Reiss has it, installation – born in the 1960s – has revived from its long slumber through the commercially driven years of the 80s.’ He later adds ‘1990s art was the rise of installation art’. As an artist with an interest in installations this extract shows its utility to me as a practicing artist and helps to define that ‘Installation is not a medium-specific or itself a medium.’