Issue 2 of Reading Room explores a paradox within contemporary art and culture's absorption of Pop. While artists continue to utilise Pop's method, 'Transcendental Pop' identifies a current shift in the infamous fascination with the everyday. Arguably, it is Warhol's defence of surface, flatness and blankness, that has been absorbed and referenced by subsequent generations of artists. These characteristic qualities have become embedded in art's relationship to the everyday - the 'real'. In part, this narrow absorption of Pop's surface has allowed a paradox to occur when artists reinvest surface with 'depth', the unknown and unquantifiable. We invite an exploration of this apparent contradiction, something which has the potential to shift the art / life nexus as we know it.

Editors: Christina Barton, Natasha Conland, Wystan Curnow.