Bio-Data Flows and Other Rhythms – A Local Story, the first publication on London-based artist Andrew Pierre Hart, accompanies his major new commission at Whitechapel Gallery. Both a visual artist and an electronic music producer, Hart has consistently explored the interrelationship between sound and painting. An illustrated essay by writer Allie Biswas discusses how Hart materialises these overlapping sensory qualities across recent exhibitions and artworks.

Curator and director Gilane Tawadros introduces Hart’s new commission, which is grounded in Hart’s research into the Whitechapel area and his conversations with those who live and work locally. Extensive illustrations document the resulting installation, which features colourful abstract and figurative paintings, a large-scale collaborative mural, a towering bamboo sculpture and video shot with three dancers in the streets surrounding the Gallery. Extended captions by curator Cameron Foote draw out how these imaginative artworks engage with Whitechapel’s history of anti-racist activism.

A conversation between Hart and artist Larry Achiampong outlines synergies between their work and their shared experiences growing up in rapidly gentrifying parts of east and west London. Hart intervenes in the book with a playful and disruptive artist’s section, fusing journal-like snapshots taken in Whitechapel, and on recent trips to Nigeria and Barbados, with concrete poems, reflections and annotations that reveal the motivations surrounding his artwork.

Paperback with flaps, 96 pages, 220 x 170 mm