Structure No. 1, Spring 1968

John J. Sharkey

Structure No. 1, Spring 1968

London, UK: Structure Publications, 1968

24 pp., 25.5 x 20.5 cm., staple-bound

Edition size unknown

The debut issue of Structure magazine laid out it’s mission as follows: 

"Structure will attempt to explore the concepts of potential environmental structures and their actual realisation in social terms, art of play. It will also explore the structural elements of environments as well as the creative possibilities and aesthetic extensions into dance, theatre, music, poetry, colour and light."

However, the first issue - of what was intended as a quarterly journal - was also its last. 

The twenty-four page magazine featured Dick Higgins' Some Graphis Mirrors (see below), Jeffrey Shaw’s "expanded cinema environment and eventstructure” work Corpocinema, artist/activist Jean Toche's Manifesto 1 for a Theatre of Human Destruction, poetry by editor John J. Sharkey and works by Al Hansen, Theo Botschuiver, Jack Collom, Brendon O'Regan, Ivor Davies, Jackie Cassen, Rudi Stern, John J Lobell, Michael Steiner, Stephen Willats and others. 

The front and back cover feature images by Dutch photographer Pieter Boersma of inflatable works by the Event Structure Research group (ERG). 

The issue is somewhat scarce and typically sells for a few hundred dollars. If securing the rights wasn’t a complete nightmare, someone should publish a compendium of single-issue magazines of the ‘avant-garde’.