ABSTRACT
Conceptualism's dematerialisation of the art object from the early 1960s saw artists deploy film and photography to record ephemeral artworks and use text and seriality to critique our understanding of photography as a communicator of information. Many Conceptual photographers investigated the importance of seriality - sequencing of images from a series - to how photographs divulge facts. In Ruscha's images of gas stations, parking lots and swimming pools, he highlights the cultural codes that can be found in everyday architecture and signage. This wry take on the series as a cataloguer of information was also seen in Keith Arnatt's many identically posed photographs of social groups such as dog owners and gardeners.
