Basel Social Club, Basel, 2026: Anthony Cairns

14 - 20 June 2026 
Overview
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Antony Cairns, LDN5_031, 2025, INKJET ON 234 CREAM, BLUE, BROWN, GREEN AND WHITE COMPUTER PUNCH CARDS, 150 x 230 cm
Antony Cairns, LDN5_031, 2025, INKJET ON 234 CREAM, BLUE, BROWN, GREEN AND WHITE COMPUTER PUNCH CARDS, 150 x 230 cm
For Basel Social Club / The Office, Cob Gallery presents a series of punch-card works by British artist Antony Cairns, whose practice critically examines the entangled histories of photography, architecture, and technological systems of labour.

Cairns prints his images of urban architecture often on office ephemera, including deadstock worksheets and company-headed computer listing paper as well as outmoded digital screens. These substrates are not neutral supports but it is arguable constitute the material language of the office itself: formats designed to organise people as well record, and transmit information.

Cob’s presentation, however, focuses specifically on his images printed onto vintage punch cards, a material once central to the automation and regulation of work.
 
 

Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include; ‘‘illum’, Encounter, Lisbon (2025), ‘Night City’, Saint Laurent Babylone, Paris (2025), ‘PXL CTY’, Sous Les Etoiles Gallery, New York (2024), ‘PXL CTY,’ The Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris (2023), ‘PXL CTY’, Akio Nagasawa, Tokyo (2023), ‘CTY 5081’, Encounter, Lisbon (2022, ‘CTY_TYO3 TYO4’, Webber, London (2021), ‘TY03TY04’, Akio Nagasawa, Tokyo (2021), ‘CTY-TY03’, Stieglitz 19, Antwerp (2020), ‘Touchstone’, The Photographers Gallery, London (2019), ‘CTY’, Akio Nagasawa, Tokyo (2019), ‘The Tale of Gordon Earl Adams’, Theatre de Verdure, Switzerland (2018), ‘TYO2-LDN4’, Roman Road, London (2017).


Selected group exhibitions include; ‘Artist Rooms’, Encounter, Lisbon (2025), ‘After the end of History’, Hayward Gallery Touring, United Kingdom (2024), ‘New Acquisitions’, Photography Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2023), ‘Civilisation - The way we live now’, Saatchi Gallery, London (2023), ‘What Remains’ Encounter, London (2021), ‘Expired’ Sara Kay Gallery, New York (2019), ‘Artificial Impressions’, Stedelijk Museum Breda (2018), ‘Shape of Light: 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art’, Tate Modern, London (2018), ‘London Nights’, Museum of London, London (2018), ‘A Matter of Memory: Photography as Object in the Digital Age’, George Eastman Museum, New York (2016), ‘Abstracts’, Copperfield, London (2015), ‘Memory Lab – Photography Challenges History’, Mudam, Luxembourg (2015), ‘Collected Shadows’ Polygon Gallery, Vancouver (2013), ‘ICP Triennial’ International Centre for Photography, New York (2013). In 2015 Cairns won the prestigious Hariban Award.

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