Collection: Mike Kelley

Mike Kelley (1954–2012) was an American artist whose practice moved across sculpture, installation, performance, video, and sound. Emerging from the CalArts milieu of the late 1970s, Kelley developed a body of work that engaged with repressed memory, popular culture, institutional critique, adolescence, and the psychic residue of everyday American life.

His collaborations with Tony Oursler, Paul McCarthy, and Sonic Youth placed him at the centre of a network of artists working across disciplines in Los Angeles and New York during the 1980s and 90s. His performances at Artists Space, New York — including Plato's Cave, Rothko's Chapel, Lincoln's Profile (1986), recorded with Sonic Youth — are among the most significant documents of the period's overlap between art, performance, and experimental music.

Kelley died in January 2012. The Compound Annex reissue of his sound works was released the same year. Publications, recordings, and printed matter gathered here document his practice across its full range. Original and period items.