Thursday, May 24, 2018

Geoffrey Hendricks and Brian Buczak | The Wisdom of the Money for Food Lady





Geoffrey Hendricks and Brian Buczak
The Wisdom of the Money for Food Lady
New York  City, USA: Money for Food Press, 1978
30 x 24 cm.
Edition of 50 signed and numbered copies


Produced for a performance and reading at Franklin Furnace, this pocket folder contains two pages from a medical book, a photographic slide, a flyer, a leaflet and a stapled price list. Hendricks had established the Money for Food Press with his partner Brian Buczak, a year prior.


"MFFP was originally created to expand the practices of its founders' artwork, which was rooted in Fluxus and Ray Johnson's New York Correspondence School. The press began with the booklet "Rulers, Ladders and Buckets," which documented a performance by Buczak and Hendricks at P.S. 1 in 1977. Over the next decade, dozens of publications were produced and distributed that intersected with the practices of New York-based artists such as George Maciunas, Lawrence Wiener, Alison Knowles and Nancy Spero. MFFP remained an essential compliment to Buczak's painting and post-Fluxus practice until his death from HIV/AIDS and related complications in 1987 and the exhibition reflects this through the inclusion of over thirty of his individual publications.

Throughout its existence, MFFP has embraced an accessible, democratic, do-it-yourself practice that encourages the breakdown of boundaries separating art and life. In the introduction to the offerings in their 1980 catalog, Dick Higgins writes "They exist as paradigms for our own imaginative processes rather than (at least primarily) investment commodities. Buy them and live well – keep them in your own private treasure chest, to be fished out and shown only to those with whom you share your own private elegances."

- Printed Matter press release




No comments:

Post a Comment