{"title":"Damon Murray","description":"\u003cp\u003eDamon Murray's work explores vivid intersections of history, culture, and human experience through diverse artistic lenses. From the stark realities of life under oppressive regimes to evocative portrayals of social and political landscapes, his writing invites readers to engage deeply with complex themes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eExpect a compelling blend of memoir, visual art, and cultural critique that challenges and illuminates. His books like \u003cem\u003eDrawings from the Gulag\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eBrutal Bloc Postcards\u003c\/em\u003e offer profound reflections within the wider sphere of \u003cstrong\u003eArts \u0026amp; Culture\u003c\/strong\u003e, making them essential for thoughtful readers.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"brutal-bloc-postcards-by-stephen-sorrell-9780995745520","title":"Brutal Bloc Postcards","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBrutal Bloc Postcards\u003c\/em\u003e by Stephen Sorrell, FUEL, and Damon Murray is a collection of previously unpublished postcards from the former Eastern Bloc. Sinister, funny, poignant, and surreal, they depict the social and architectural values of the period.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBrutal concrete hotels, futurist TV towers, and heroic worker statues—this collection of Soviet era postcards documents the uncompromising landscape of the Eastern Bloc through its buildings and monuments. The postcards are interspersed with quotes from prominent figures of the time that both support and confound the ideologies presented in the images.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn contrast to the photographs of a ruined and abandoned Soviet empire we are accustomed to seeing today, the scenes depicted here publicise the bright future of communism: social housing blocks, Palaces of Culture, and monuments to Comradeship. Dating from the 1960s to the 1980s, they offer a nostalgic yet revealing insight into the social and architectural values of the time, acting as a window through which we can examine cars, people, and, of course, buildings. These postcards, sanctioned by the authorities, were intended to show the world what living in communism looked like.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eInstead, this postcard propaganda inadvertently communicates other messages: outside the House of Political Enlightenment in Yerevan, the flowerbed reads 'Glory to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union'; in Novopolotsk, art school pupils paint plein air, and their subject is a housing estate; at the Irkutsk Polytechnic Institute, students stroll past a five-metre tall concrete hammer and sickle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Thames and Hudson (Australia) Pty Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47076358062316,"sku":"9780995745520","price":54.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/f7b01b35349ecf20297c9bfd6e7fc5e5.jpg?v=1765221261"},{"product_id":"chess-players-by-stephen-sorrell-9781739887865","title":"Chess Players","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAn incredible collection of images of chess players from the last 130 years, showcasing the unique relationship between chess and culture, featuring world-famous actors, artists, politicians, and musicians.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eYou don't have to play chess to appreciate \u003ci\u003eChess Players: from Charlie Chaplin to Wu-Tang Clan\u003c\/i\u003e, but as Martin Amis asks in his illuminating essay: What are they playing at?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThese evocative photographs transcend the chessboard, spanning 130 years—from a steamship crossing the Atlantic in 1888 to the zero-gravity of space—showcasing the diverse range of individuals who have embraced the game across continents and eras.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eMarcel Duchamp's iconic quote, 'All chess players are artists,' resonates through these pages. David Hockney likened the game's strategic thinking to that of making art: 'Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make.'\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e'Chess is war over the board,' said Bobby Fischer, a grandmaster and world chess champion—but here John Lennon and Yoko Ono checkmate this notion with their all-white, chess 'peace' set.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHollywood stars played chess on and off the screen—Humphrey Bogart deploys a Sicilian Defence against Lauren Bacall, while Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen plot their next gambit in the iconic chess seduction scene from \u003ci\u003eThe Thomas Crown Affair\u003c\/i\u003e (1968).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWith an introduction by Dylan Loeb McClain, former chess columnist for \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, the photographs in \u003ci\u003eChess Players\u003c\/i\u003e help explain the enduring attraction of this cerebral game, from pawn to king, amateur to grandmaster.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Thames and Hudson (Australia) Pty Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47076467704044,"sku":"9781739887865","price":64.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/12866123482807.jpg?v=1765198313"},{"product_id":"alcohol-by-stephen-sorrell-9780993191152","title":"Alcohol","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe book includes examples from the 1960s through to the 1980s, but focuses on posters produced during Mikhail Gorbachev's campaign initiated in 1985. These posters attempted to sober up Soviet citizens by forcing them to confront the issues associated with excessive alcohol consumption.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis government-led urgency allowed the poster designers to present the anti-alcohol message in the most graphic terms: they depicted drunks literally trapped inside the bottle or being strangled by \"the green snake.\" Their protagonists are paralytic freeloaders and shirkers who always neglect their families, drive under the influence, produce substandard work, are smashed when pregnant and present a constant danger to fellow citizens.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA two-part essay by renowned cultural historian Alexei Plutser-Sarno attempts to explain, from a Russian perspective, the reasons behind this phenomenon.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Thames and Hudson (Australia) Pty Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47462590120172,"sku":"9780993191152","price":48.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9780993191152-alcohol.jpg?v=1775017111"},{"product_id":"drawings-from-the-gulag-by-fuel-9780956356246","title":"Drawings from the Gulag","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eDrawings from the Gulag\u003c\/em\u003e consists of 130 drawings by Danzig Baldaev describing the history, horror and peculiarities of the Gulag system from its inception in 1918. Baldaev's father, a respected ethnographer, taught him techniques to record the tattoos of criminals in St Petersburg's notorious Kresty prison, where he worked as a guard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHe was reported to the KGB who unexpectedly supported his work, allowing him the opportunity to travel across the former USSR. Witnessing scenes of everyday life in the Gulag, he chronicled this previously closed world from both sides of the wire.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWith every vignette, Baldaev brings the characters he depicts to vivid life: from the lowest \u003cem\u003ezek\u003c\/em\u003e (inmate) to the most violent tattooed \u003cem\u003evor\u003c\/em\u003e (thief), all the practices and inhabitants of the Gulag system are depicted here in incredible, and often shocking, detail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn documenting the attitude of the authorities to those imprisoned, and the transformation of those citizens into survivors or victims of the Gulag system, this 'graphic novel' vividly depicts methods of torture and mass murder undertaken by the administration, as well as the atrocities committed by criminals on their fellow inmates.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Thames and Hudson (Australia) Pty Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47596297421036,"sku":"9780956356246","price":60.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/66b09ec853247e80bd88e9b5e5eb3048.jpg?v=1777930494"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.pro\/collections\/damon-murray.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}