Archives by Artists

ARCHIVES BY ARTISTS, curated by my old friends Jim Drobnick and Jennifer Fisher (under the banner name DisplayCult) opens tonight at Galerie UQO in Gatineau, Quebec. 

The opening begins at 5pm, and the exhibition continues until April 12th, 2025. It features multiples by Joseph Beuys, Ilya Kabakov, Charlette Moorman, and others. 

Here’s the press release: 

 

 

"Institutions commonly act as the repository for documents, images and archives. What happens when artists assume that role, and turn the archive into a creative medium? Archives by Artists presents a diverse range of strategies used by artists to explore and imaginatively reconceive the archive. Their works contain items typically found in an archive, such as photos, postcards, letters, maps and newsclippings, but also unconventional items such as smells and sounds. These eclectic archives illuminate the artists' own art and practice, reflect upon the notions of community and social networks, revisit historical events, examine timely themes about memory and preservation, as well as question the nature and dynamics of the archive itself. Archives by Artists presents not only visual artists who have deployed the archive as a medium in their practice, but also printmakers, poets, performance artists, dancers, musicians and filmmakers. 

 

At Galerie UQO, ten vitrines reveal different aspects of artist-based archives. These works appropriate the look and feel of the archive to make it a capacious platform for reflection, expression and critique. The exhibition's roster includes Canadian and international artists, with works from the 1960s to today: Ioannis Anastasiou & Majka Dokudowicz, Aiden Bettine, Joseph Beuys, Christian Boltanski, Nick Cave & Bob Faust, Amanda Chestnut, William N. Copley, Camila Estrella, Dora García, Ilya Kabakov, Joseph Kosuth, Kiran Kumār, Lefevre Jean Claude, Kiwi Menrath, Charlotte Moorman, Tammy Nguyen, Sophie Nys, Jürgen O. Olbrich, Bárbara Oettinger, Carlos Soto Román, Dieter Roth, Vicky Sabourin, Vilma Samulionytė, Camille Turner & Yaniya Lee, Danh Vō, and Laurie Young. Besides artists' multiples, the exhibition features videos, wallworks, and an installation with a free take-away. Each week selected multiples will be available for visitors to examine, providing the opportunity for personal, hands-on engagement. 

 

While curating and writing about the “archival turn” in contemporary art has covered installations, books, performances and videos, the medium of multiples has been generally overlooked. Archives by Artists positions multiples as a particularly apt vehicle to contemplate and mobilize conceptions of the archive. Each archive-multiple incorporates an assortment of rearrangable items, highlights the experience of tactile, sensory knowledge, and circumvents tendencies toward static placements or fixed meanings. Similar to delving into an actual archive, the multiples in this exhibition generate unpredictable encounters in a process that fosters complex associations between the items. The activity of sorting through and negotiating the components of the multiples endow the viewer with an intimate access and invites them to perform both as a researcher and artist’s collaborator.

 

In the space of this exhibition, the archive-multiple is presented as a platform to experiment with methods of documentation, collection and preservation to test alternatives and launch critiques. The works align with the ongoing discussion in public and institutional archives pertaining to issues of decolonization and inclusion. The artists’ archives here become vital sites for tracking transformations in the materiality of history, art and heritage. Archives by Artists underscores artistic agency in both research and creation, where the centrifugal function of archives and the centripetal practice of multiples meet in constructive tension. 

 

This exhibition is part of an overall research initiative by Mélanie Boucher and Marie-Hélène Leblanc on museums, exhibitions and collections. It is jointly produced by Galerie UQO, l’Équipe Art et musée (FRQ 2022-2026) and CIÉCO Research and Inquiry Group’s New Uses of Collections in Art Museums Partnership (SSHRC 2021-2028). The exhibition is also supported by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Université du Québec en Outaouais, and York University. 

 

The installation PaperPolice (2025) by Jürgen O. Olbrich includes books from the library of Yves Lacroix (1939-2017). A founding member of UQAM, Yves Lacroix was a writer and professor in the Department of Literature, specializing in comic strips and the works of Pierre Perrault. He was one of the first professors to teach comics in Quebec. 

 

A parallel exhibition is presented at the library of the Université du Québec en Outaouais, Lucien-Brault pavilion, from March 12 to April 12, 2025.

 

* * *

Launch of Entretiens #7: Archives, Multiples and the Research Collection 

Edited by Galerie UQO, March 12, 5 p.m.  Launch price: $15 

 

Entretiens #7 is a publication that features an interview with Jim Drobnick and Jennifer Fisher on collecting as a form of research in the curating of Archives by Artists. Entretiens is a series that brings together partners from various disciplinary fields to discuss the institutional and artistic issues faced by Galerie UQO. Galerie UQO’s mandate is to contribute to the advancement and dissemination of art knowledge, and its publications directly supplement the discourse on contemporary art.

 

* * *

Curator biographies

 

Jim Drobnick (OCAD University) and Jennifer Fisher (York University) form the curatorial collaborative DisplayCult, a framework for creatively merging disciplines, media and audiences to propose prototypes for display and aesthetic engagement. Curatorial projects include Portraits as Portals (Art Windsor-Essex and Agnes Etherington Art Centre), NIGHTSENSE (Nuit Blanche, Toronto), MetroSonics (National Gallery of Canada), Aural Cultures (Walter Phillips Gallery), Odor Limits (Esther M. Klein Art Gallery) and Vital Signs (Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery), among others. They founded and edit the Journal of Curatorial Studies. www.displaycult.com

 

For more information:

Marie-Hélène Leblanc, Director/Curator, Galerie UQO 

Marie-Helene.Leblanc@uqo.ca

(819) 595-3900, poste 2677

 

Jessica Minier, Coordinator, Galerie UQO

jessica.minier@uqo.ca

(819) 595-3900, poste 2327

Galerie UQO

Université du Québec en Outaouais

Pavillon Lucien-Brault, 101 rue Saint-Jean-Bosco

Gatineau, QC, J8X 3X7 Canada

galerie.uqo.ca

Hours: Tuesday to Friday: 10 am to 6 pm, Saturday: 12 noon to 4 pm”.

David Shrigley | No Junk Mail

 

David Shrigley

No Junk Mail 

Toronto, Canada: Paul + Wendy Projects, 2014

13 x 13 cm.

Edition of 100 (+12 APs) signed and numbered copies

Yesterday I gave an artists’ talk to Liz Knox’s class on the subject of text in art. I spoke mostly about my own work, but also briefly showed some favourite examples from Kay Rosen, Maurizio Nannucci, Yoko Ono, Cary Leibowitz, Kelly Mark and David Shrigley. 

This one stands out for me because it is also one of the best Christmas presents I’ve ever received. 

I was complaining to my friends Paul and Wendy (of Paul+Wendy Projects) that I was sick of getting so much junk mail, but skeptical of hanging an ugly, earnest “No Junk Mail” sign on the front of my house. I casually mentioned that if David Shrigley made one, I would be interested. 

Without telling me, they contacted David and asked if they could commission him to make us one, as a gift. He agreed, and it turned out so well that they published it in an edition of a hundred copies. 

Sadly, we no longer get mail delivered to our door, so this now sits in our front foyer as a souvenir, alongside a house number that Micah Lexier made us for our previous address [see below]. 

No Junk Mail is a porcelain enamel on steel sign and the 23rd edition published by Paul+Wendy Projects. It is housed in a cardboard box and is accompanied by a letterpress card with the artists signature. It sold for $250 CDN, but is now long unavailable (as are the two book bags they later published with the artist). 

Erik Kessels

Happy Birthday to Erik Kessels!

Lee Lozano | Notebooks 1967-70

Lee Lozano

Notebooks 1967-70

New York City, USA: Primary Information, 2010

224 pp., 8.5 x 10.75", softcover

Edition of 1500

Before this volume, I knew very little about Lee Lozano's confounding life and body of work. I was familiar with her contribution to the SMS periodical and her involvement with the Art Workers Coalition (“for me there can be no art revolution that is separate from a science revolution, a political revolution, an education revolution, a drug revolution, a sex revolution[...]"), but little else.

This is possibly due to the success of two of her epic works, General Strike and Dropout. The former, from 1969, reads:

"Gradually but determinedly avoid being present at official or public ‘uptown’ functions or gatherings related to the art world in order to pursue investigation of total personal & public revolution."

Dropout went even further.

"It was inevitable...that I do the Dropout Piece," she wrote on April 5, 1970, "It had been churning for a long time but I think it's about to blow. Dropout Piece is the hardest work I have ever done in that it involves destruction of (or at least complete understanding of) powerful emotional habits. I want to get over my habit of emotional dependence on love. I want to start trusting myself & others more. I want to believe that I have power & complete my own fate."

Retiring from the art world as an artwork is celebrated in the practice of Tehching Hsieh, but Lozano never attained the same cult-like status he was afforded. Or respect. Reclusive male artists, such as Stanley Brouwn and On Kawara, were granted autonomy from the art world without accusations of being "caught in the space between art and madness” [curator Alanna Heiss]. Even Bas Jan Ader and Ray Johnson - whose deaths straddled the line between artwork and suicide - are rarely discussed in such emotional terms.

Few artist's stories are as compelling and enigmatic as Lozano's. A New York Times obituary and an unmarked grave make strange bedfellows. But rather than attempt to piece together her complicated life, publisher Primary Information instead present pages compiled from notebooks that Lozano kept from 1967 to 1970. The volume eschews any supplemental information at all, even pagination, in favour of a facsimile reprint of the loose pages as they were found photocopied thirty-odd years ago.

Lozano notes within the journal that she considered the pages to be "drawings," and they were periodically exhibited and sold as such.

The first third of the entries are essentially preparatory sketches for paintings, and the shift towards conceptualism is anticipated in the evolving way that she views these works. In December of 1968 she writes "Decided to refer to the paintings as "Movies", then changed the word to "Films" for pun value". An entry from May 10th, 1969 reads "If the canvases are on warped stretchers, let them be hung on specially built warped walls."

She fantasizes for a few pages about refusing to sell her paintings and, eventually, to only showing them to close friends. The transition away from the medium she was celebrated for soon follows.

The move from painting towards conceptual and performative work was not uncommon in the mid-to-late sixties, but Lozano's might legitimately be called radical. Writing in Art Journal Open, Lauren O’Neill-Butler noted that “at a time when Conceptual artists were outdoing themselves in dematerializing their objects and their activities, competing as to who could do less and still call it art, Lee outdid them all by doing less with an unmatched intensity that made it more.”

Alongside the two epic acts of refusal are smaller gestures that also illustrate Lozano's growing disdain for the ways that art making was intertwined with commerce and social activity. Party Piece (or Paranoia Piece) reads:

"Describe your current work to a famous but failing artist from the early 60’s. Wait to see whether he boosts* any of your ideas.  March 15, 1969. *hoist, cop, steal"

Withdrawal Piece, from February 1969, proposes:

"Pull out of show at Dick Bellamy's to avoid hanging with work that brings you down."

The two other artist notebooks I have in my collection are by George Brecht and Michael Snow, both designed to mimic the ubiquitous spiral-bound school workbook.  The Brecht title documents his time as a student studying under John Cage, and serves as a collection of proto-Fluxus "event" scores. Snow's recounts his high school days, but is in fact (like his The Last LP record) an entire fabrication, playing on the juvenile pun of the title High School. "The high in High School refers to dope," he recounted, laughing, a few years ago.

Lozano may indeed have been stoned when she wrote many of her entries, given that Grass Piece, from 1969, proposes that the artist "Stay high all day, every day. See what happens". A similar work suggests taking acid for thirty days, something many friends think forever changed her. Even a painting proposal (unrealized) calls for the same paintings to be made while stoned, drunk and sober.

But whereas other artists' facsimile notebooks tend to focus on the formative years, and serve as additional colouring to an understanding of their practice, for Lozano's work the notebooks are instrumental. “I have started to document everything," she writes, "because I cannot give up my love of ideas.”

While a few of these ideas are playful and light (such as proposing using a toilet tank as an aquarium for pet fish, because it self-cleans from the regular flushing) most of the scores consist of strict self-imposed rules that increasingly structured most aspects of Lozano's life.

Her 1969 Masturbation Investigation - which dictates the types of things she can fantasize about, as well as the various objects she may use (carrot, feather, hard rubber motorcycle pedal) - can also be viewed in the context of withdrawal and refusal. Immediately under the title, Lozano notes that the work takes place simultaneous to Grass Piece, and General Strike, but also "I refuse to see my partner or anyone else".

In August 1971, she began what might be her best known (and least understood) work, Boycott Piece. In the her New York Times obituary, penned by Roberta Smith, this work was given top billing, in the headline: "Lee Lozano, 68, Conceptual Artist Who Boycotted Women for Years."

Initially, the plan was to stop speaking to women for a month, in order to "make communication better than ever". But the work gradually morphed into a lifelong project. It was almost as though non-participation in the art world was not sufficient. Lozano had to further alienate herself, in order to achieve her own personal revolution.

Her mother was reportedly exempt, but otherwise it is said that the artist did not have a civil conversation with another woman for the last twenty-eight years of her life. Sol Lewitt, her friend, confirmed that New York waitresses became accustomed to being ignored by her. His wife, Carol LeWitt, confirmed that whenever the two encountered each other, Lozano would cover her eyes and turn away. Mark Kramer, the artist's cousin, said that she wouldn't even enter a store if a woman was behind the counter.

Alternately viewed as radical feminism or profound misogyny, the work surely must be considered one of the longest duration performances ever, and perhaps the most difficult to unpack.

Very little is known about Lozano's self-imposed exile in Texas, from 1972 until her death from cervical cancer in 1999. She left no survivors and was buried without a headstone, amongst the bodies of the homeless and unclaimed.

In a 2001 interview, Lucy Lippard (the first 'victim' of the Boycott piece) noted, "Lee was extraordinarily intense, one of the first, if not the first person (along with Ian Wilson) who did the life-as-art thing. The kind of things other people did as art, she really did as life--and it took us a while to figure that out."

This title is now out-of-print (despite high edition sizes, Primary Information titles frequently sell out*) but copies can be found on ABE, here, for between twenty and a hundred dollars. 

Also, since the publication of this book fifteen years ago, there has been a renewed interest in Lozano’s fascinating practice and life, and several other books about Lozano have been released, including several spiral-bound facsimile notebooks. 

*A second printing in January 2018 has also sold-out. This makes for a good argument to join their yearly subscription service, here. 

Alice Cattaneo | Everything Was Interesting

Alice Cattaneo

Everything Was Interesting Badge

Birmingham, UK: Ikon Gallery, [nd]

size unknown

Edition size unknown

Twenty-two years ago Ikon Gallery presented the first exhibition of Kelly Mark’s work in the United Kingdom. The title came from something Mark casually said to the curator years prior. The phrase was printed onto thousands of buttons which were distributed for free to visitors of the gallery. 

My friend KR just informed me of this response piece, which I’m certain was not intended as a memorial to Mark, but functions nicely as one. 

There’s almost no information about the work (on the Ikon site, or elsewhere, that I could find). I’m guessing that they published it, but it could’ve been self-published by the artist. 

They’re priced at a pound and I want one, but fear that shipping costs would be way more than the work itself. 

https://shop.ikon-gallery.org/products/everything-was-interesting-badge

Grayson Perry | Piggy Bank

Grayson Perry

Piggy Bank

London, UK: Serpentine Gallery, 2017 

9 x 21 x 9 cm.

Open and unlimited edition

From the 8th of June to the 10th of September, 2017, the Serpentine presented The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever!, a show of new work by Grayson Perry, touching on themes such as popularity and art, masculinity, and the broader cultural landscape.

At the entrance to the exhibition was a ceramic piggy bank with multiple coin slots, each named for a particular aspect of society. Young, Female, Urban, Black, Us or Them appear on one side of the pig, and Old, Right, Rural, Poor or Leave on the other. [see below].

The title for the work, Long Pig, reportedly refers to a term for human meat used in some Polynesian cultures that once practised cannibalism in the past, perhaps raising the question of who will swallow whom? 

The open edition “little pig” was released at the same time, and later reissued to the celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the gallery. It consists of a blue and white glazed ceramic piggy bank with a rubber stopper, packaged in grey cardboard box. 

Jasper Johns | Target

[Jasper Johns]

Technics and Creativity : Gemini G.E.L.

New York City, USA: The Museum of Modern Art. 1971

108 pp.,  27 x 22.5 cm., clamshell box

Edition of 22,500

The high edition size of this classic explains why - despite being celebrated and over fifty years - this can still be picked up for a few hundred dollars. 

More commonly known as Target, this publication consists of a white plastic clam-shell box that contains a catalogue raisonné of prints by Gemini G.E.L. and a newly commissioned multiple by Jasper Johns.

The book features 364 illustrations (20 in colour) of the prints and multiples issued by Los Angeles-based Gemini G.E. Artists featured include Josef Albers, John Altoon, Wallace Berman, Sam Francis, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Man Ray, Claes Oldenburg, Ken Price, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, and Frank Stella. 

Target is a do-it-yourself collaboration where the buyer is invited to complete the target with the paint-by-numbers watercolour pads and brush provided. Johns’ signature is printed and a space is left to co-sign.