Janice Kerbel | 15 Lombard St

Janice Kerbel 

15 Lombard St

London, UK: Bookworks, 2000

104 pp., 16.5 x 23 cm., softcover

Edition of 1000

In the late nineties, Toronto-born artist Janice Kerbel was living in London and was broke. It was then that she conceived of the work she is perhaps still best known for: Bank Job (below). 

A recent graduate of Goldsmith's College (after completing her undergrad at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver), Kerbel posed as an architecture student in order to stake out a bank. She observed the daily routine in and around the Lombard Street branch of Coutts & Co. for over a year and a half. 

The resulting bookwork is a detailed instructional manual, guiding the reader through a blueprint for a perfect heist. In addition to the location, the exhaustive plan includes security, necessary accomplices, diversion tactics and even a get-away to a Spanish hideout. Illustrated with diagrams, maps and blurry photographs, the text borrows from the language of Heist films ("The team is composed of ten individuals, seven of whom comprise a core group and three who are contracted and paid a fixed fee, half in advance, half upon completion") to 

the perfect crime

Kerbel's rigorous and meticulous crafting of plan is undermined by its inevitable lack of execution - by publishing the plans she invalidates them. The artist's efforts become almost Sisyphean in their grandeur. 

"There was a lot of press around it at the time," Kerbel told the CBC recently, "Dumb stuff like, 'Is this an act of public irresponsibility?' Clearly it's not…. The moment when I presented the work, it became immediately obsolete."

"By surveying surveillance Kerbel shows how different systems are interrelated, forming a web of control. Kerbel’s aim is not simply to subvert but to emphasize the fact that the idea of absolute control and the fantasy of robbing a bank are interconnected and mutually sustaining." 

- Publisher's blurb