Spending most of his career in England, John Latham, who was born in Northern Rhodesia in the region now called Zambia, became an avant-garde painter and conceptual artists whose works included performances and installations and in many instances were highly controversial. Central to Latham's paintings were spray guns, glass and books, which symbolized human knowledge passed through generations, and which he frequently attached to his paintings---called 'book reliefs'. In the 1950s, he began using a spray gun, the first artist in England to use that method. For him, spray painting the books was symbolic of people's ability to destroy their culture. In the 1960s, Latham did some performances of book destruction ...