Dave Dyment | Incomplete Open Cube

Dave Dyment

Incomplete Open Cube

Sackville, Canada: Self-published, 2026

15 x 15 cm.

Edition of 25 signed and numbered copies

Last month Jon Clayton hosted the International Sackville Cube Day event as part of the book launch for his new graphic novel Nowhere. Poet Geordie Miller read, singer Julie Doiron performed and a dozen or so visual artists displayed cube related art works. 

My contribution was a take-away envelope containing an image of the cube that I took on our second visit to the town, when the fully automated refrigerator building was not yet complete.

Alison Knowles Weisbaden

Eunice Luk, who I’m working with on a project for Ontario Culture Days in the fall, visited Wiesbaden, Germany earlier in the year. She brought me back these four cards from an exhibition celebrating the work of Alison Knowles, who turned 92 a month ago today. 

Goodwater Ephemera at Plumb Fundraiser

From John Goodwin’s Instagram account (a few weeks ago, and today):

"Tonight my friend Anthony Cooper dropped by to pick up the goodwater ephemera starter kit, 2024. The kit is being donated to the PLUMB for their upcoming fundraising auction. It’s an archival box containing all kinds of ephemera-like stuff including business cards, exhibition invites, stickers, bookplates, small publications, distribution catalogs, bookmarks, even a complete set of goodwater mailers – there’s a total of 85 items. Anyway, it was fun to “organize” this material and stuff it all in one box with a corresponding checklist and, of course, a magnifying glass. It will be on display for their upcoming auction."

"This is an installation shot of the goodwater ephemera starter kit - an archival box containing around 85 items selected from stuff I've accumulated over the years. It's installed at the PLUMB where there's going to be a preview on December 7-8. Then the auction takes place somehow via Instagram. The kit has all kinds of things, business cards, invitations, mailers, bookmarks, bar coasters, postcards, letterhead, concert ticket stubs, bookplates, buttons, even a fax of the membership list of Cold City Gallery. And one of the items is a complete set of goodwater mailers, like about 45 of them. Anyway, if you're into Kippenberger, Gober, Nannucci, Bloom, Holzer, Shearer, Davey, Group Material, Belcher, Dion, Feldmann, Kruger, Ono, Weiner, etc etc etc, then this BOX has your name on it! Bid baby bid! Oh, and it comes with a MAGNIFYING GLASS!"

Goodwin’s Goodwater Corktown project continues his love of producing compelling ephemera to announce exhibitions and projects (previously he was the director of both Printed Matter and Art Metropole, and published multiples under the banner of Shark Editions). 

The Plumb is great artists’ initiated gallery space in Toronto, ran by a collective of artists, writers, and curators that include Amanda Boulos, Laura Carusi, Anthony Cooper, Patrick Cruz, Laura Demers, Emma Green, Warren Harper, Daniel Griffin Hunt, Nadine Maher, Avalon Mott, Dainesha Nugent-Palache, John Nyman, Ciar O'Mahony, Emerald Repard-Denniston, Claudia Rick, Miles Rufelds, Callum Schuster, Blair Swann, and Emma Welch. 

To bid, visit https://theplumb.ca/ for more information. 

The Flue Volume 1, Number 5

[Franklin Furnace]

The Flue Volume 1, Number 5

New York City, USA: Franklin Furnace, 1981

8 pp., 43 x 29 cm., newspaper

Edition size unknown

Martha Wilson founded Franklin Furnace in 1976, to serve artists working in marginalized media such as publishing and performance, which could be vulnerable to "institutional neglect, cultural bias, their ephemeral nature, or politically unpopular content."

Four years in, the Artist Run Centre began publishing a periodical called The Flue. Conceived by artist and printer Conrad Gleber, The Flue published sixteen issues between 1980 and 1989, which varied in format, including tabloids, posters, and newsletters. 

The publication served as a vehicle for promotion, political advocacy1, and helping to fulfill the mandate  of the organization, with articles on Artists’ Books, Performance Art, and Video works. It featured contributions by Jon Hendricks, Barbara Moore, Clive Philpot, Louise Lawler, Pauline Oliveros, and many others. 

A variety of artists were invited to serve as editors and designers, including Barbara Kruger, Linda Montano, Sherrie Levine, Carla Liss, and Buzz Spector. Richard McGuire served as both for this fifth issue2, which featured Laurie Anderson on the cover, promoting a concert she gave in celebration of Franklin Furnace’s fifth anniversary. 

The issue also features Diana Augaitis’ “Eastern European Bookworks,” "Sound Works 2" by Peter Frank (see last week's post, here) and descriptions of installations and performances by Al Aguilar, Sydney Blum & Janet Henry, Ronny H. Cohen, James Coleman, Toby MacLennan, Sandra McKee, Carol Meine, and Sandy Moore.

Copies of the periodical are now extremely rare. This issue can be bought for $175 US, here, or downloaded as a free PDF from Primary Information, here. As part of their ongoing efforts to make rare, archival material available, the publisher has collaborated with Franklin Furnace to digitize and disturb all sixteen issues. 

1. In her editorial, Martha Wilson notes "As I am writing this, President Reagan is dealing a heavy blow to arts funding for organizations which present avant-garde art. Below you will see my letter to the New York Times and a reply from a citizen who doesn’t realize that less than a dollar a year of tax payer’s money is devoted to the arts in America." 

2. Wilson remained as Editor-in-Chief and McGuire shared editorial duties with Lucy Evanicki. 

Goodwater Summer exhibition

 

Few people still put this level of care into physical invitations. It’s always a pleasure to get mail from John Goodwin/Goodwater. 

 

Artists’ Invitations 1965-1985

[Bruno Tonini, ed.]

Artists’ Invitations 1965-1985

Ravenna, Italy: Danilo Montanari Editore, 2019

510 pp., 16.5 x 24 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

Many artists would presumably have no interest in creating a postcard to advertise their exhibition, happy to allow the gallery staff to design, print and distribute, preferring producing the work over its promotion. Others (myself included) relish the opportunity to use the format of the invitation as venue for a new work, or different context. Or just as an opportunity to play around with materials. 

Putting an image of the most impressive piece in the show is likely a good method to ensure that it sells, but I would rather use the space of the card to expand upon the show, even if only slightly. 

The category of 'artists' ephemera' has become a sub-genre of artists' publications in the last thirty or so years. My own collection is negligible, though I've curated a couple of exhibitions of ephemera (and their distant cousin, the performance relic) for YYZ in Toronto and MST in Calgary. I also contributed an essay on the subject of ephemera to the Open Studio publication Printopolis.

I always attribute the increased interest in ephemera both to pioneering art dealers, like Harry Ruhe and Steven Leiber (whose book Extra Art: A Survey of Artists' Ephemera 1960-1999 paved the way for titles like this, and the MoMA catalogue Please Come to My Show) and to a collector's desire to own a work that was possibly designed to thwart such ownership. I'm thinking of certain works in the genres of Conceptual Art, Land Art, Performance Art, etc. etc. If you can't buy Robert Barry's Closed Gallery, the next best thing is to acquire the announcement card, I guess. 

For me, collecting this material is of interest because you can amass a decent collection for free. Even if I'm not particularly interested in a particular example, I tend to save invitations when I have a clear sense that they were designed by the artist. 

When I was at Art Metropole we would always take a binder of ephemera to the Basel Art Fair, primarily for collector Christoph Schifferli to peruse and shop from. These items ranged from recent mailings to duplicate materials from Art Metropole's archive. The works in Artists’ Invitations 1965-1985 come from his impressive collection, and the collection of editor Bruno Tonini and his wife Alessandra. 

Tonini's title aims to illustrate this lesser known aspect of the ’60s, ‘70s, and ’80s art world, with a particular focus on Minimalism, Conceptual Art, Land Art, Pop Art, Fluxus, and Actionism, including Spanish and South American art.

Cary Leibowitz | Homo

Cary Leibowitz
Homo
New York City, USA: Self-published, 1989
9 x 5 cm.
Edition size unknown

The artists' business card, from the late eighties when he used the moniker Candyass.

Christo | Salon de mai, 1981

Poster for FLUXUS FESTIVAL

Fluxus
Poster for FLUXUS FESTIVAL
Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Fluxus, 1963
85 x 61.7 cm.
Edition size unknown

A letterpress poster designed by Willem de Ridder for a festival he organized that took place in June of 1963. Presented at the Hypokriterion Theater, it featured "theatre compositions, street compositions, exhibits, and electronic music."

Stanley Brouwn turns 81 today

Robert C Morgan Collection

Today Granary Books announced the availability of The Robert C. Morgan Conceptual Art Collection of  Correspondence, Interviews, Artists' Books, Monographs, Catalogs, and Ephemera. 
The collection features works by Carl Andre, Art&Language, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Jan Dibbets, Peter Downsbrough, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Douglas Huebler, Allan Kaprow, Joseph Kosuth, Muntadas, Sol LeWitt, Michael Snow, and Lawrence Weiner.

Included are many much-coveted artists' books, such as Michael Snow's Cover to Cover, Ruscha's Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations, Jan Dibbets' Robin Redbreast’s Territory and John Baldessari's Fable. Other highlights include Art-Language journals, Seth Seigelaub publications and cassettes containing interviews Morgan conducted. These include conversations with Marina Abromović, Baldessari, Barry, Haacke, Huebler, Kaprow, Komar and Melamid, Kosuth, Lucy Lippard, Ruscha, Siegelaub, Snow, Bernar Venet, John Weber, and Weiner. Many of them have never been transcribed.

"Robert C. Morgan (b. 1943) is an internationally renowned American art critic, art historian, curator, lecturer, poet, and painter. He completed his dissertation, "The Role of Documentation in Conceptual Art: An Aesthetic Inquiry," at New York University (School of Education) in 1978. It was the first dissertation on Conceptual art in the U.S. and was later rewritten, updated and published as Conceptual Art: An American Perspective (McFarland & Company, 1994).

The present collection springs from Morgan's assiduous research and writing, and provides copious evidence of and discerning insight into the enduring phenomenon of Conceptual art, with particular attention to Lawrence Weiner, Robert Barry, Peter Downsbrough, John Baldessari, Dan Graham, Douglas Huebler, Seth Siegelaub, Allan Kaprow, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, and Ed Ruscha, to name a few. The collection includes artists' books, monographs, catalogs, cards, posters, recordings, correspondence, manuscripts, typescripts, and so forth, and represents the work of more than 100 artists, writers, curators, and editors."

- Granary Books press release

For more information, view the prospectus at Granary Books, here.