International Sackville Cube Day Book Launch

The small town of Sackville has little in the way of a skyline - the only thing that can be seen from a distance is a fourteen storey, windowless building affectionately known as The Cube. The structure serves as a silo for frozen cranberries and blueberries. A few years ago we* hosted a screening projected onto the building (which is taller than any drive-in cinema in North America) and I was hopeful that I would gain access to the space in the process, to poke around a little. I learned that there was no access to the building, to anyone. It’s a fully automated refrigerator that requires no staff. 

To launch his newest graphic novel Jon Claytor invited local artists, poets, musicians to present work on the subject of the cube, or cubes in general. Billed as a ‘variety show’ the evening will include readings, a slide-show, musical performances and more. Paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs are presented in the multi-room space. I contributed an ephemeral envelope take-away piece (see next post).

Claytor’s Nowhere is a zombie story set in a nondescript town where a giant cube appears on the edge of town. Recently relocated twelve year old Joel and his friend Charlie witness the slow disappearance of the citizens in the area, and are forced to reckon with their new reality. 

The launch event takes place at Living Things (a recent co-operative store where artists sell ceramics, clothing, cards, calendars, patches, prints, vinyl records and other creations) tomorrow at 7pm. 25 Lorne Street. 

*Struts Gallery (which were were the directors of, at the time), the Owens Art Gallery, and Sappyfest presented a selection of video works by artists, followed by a projected performance by Lido Pimienta. See below. 

Voorwerk 1

Fiona Rae, Doriana Chiarini, Aernout Mik, Kay Rosen

Voorwerk 1

Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Witte de With, 1990

21 x 31 cm., boxed

Edition of 500

In October of 1990, Witte de With in Rotterdam held the first of their Voorwerk series, which featured works by Doriana Chiarini, Aernout Mik, Fiona Rae, and American artist Kay Rosen, curated by Gosse Oosterhof.

Voorwerk translates to "preliminary work" and the series featured then-younger and emerging artists, with the intention to provide "the first substantial presentation of works by relatively unknown artists". Their track record of picking those who would go on to greater success, especially in this first year, is pretty incredible. The shows were annual and presented without thematics or common denominators.

Italian artist Doriana Chiarini presented elegant objects that combined design and art. Dutch artist Aernout Mik showed his Dummies series, which consists of cushions from photographic linen, loosely modelled after the human body, that are photographically printed with children’s portraits. The two painters couldn't have been more different - Fiona Rae exhibited abstract works and Kay Rosen presented textual paintings rich with visual jokes, taken from everyday conversation, pulp novels and telephone directories.

The "catalogue" for the exhibition featured a compartmentalized cardboard box containing works by all four artists: an original painting by Fiona Rae (each unique), five cards by Kay Rosen, a fold out paper by Chiarini and five photocards by Mik.

Art Metropole stocked at least two of the three boxes that were released, in the first year that I worked there. I can't remember the exact price, but I seem recall them being between thirty and fifty dollars. All of the titles have increased in value considerably since that time, with the first one (owing much to the inclusion of the unique Rae painting) becoming particularly costly. Prices have subsequently settled and the work can now be found again for under a hundred dollars. 

Jennie C Jones | RPM

 

Jennie C Jones

RPM

New Canaan, USA: The Glass House, 2018

20 x 20 cm.

Edition of 18 [+5 AP] signed and numbered copies 

RPM (revolutions per minute) is a limited edition 7"45 RPM lathe cut single housed in a letterpress sleeve. The work brings together two commissioned audio collages from the artist’s 2018 exhibition at The Glass House. The sound works respond to the Philip Johnson–designed Glass House and Sculpture Gallery. The title track employs a harmonious combination of solfeggio frequencies that considers the aural environment of the Glass House. In "Year of Construction: 1970," the aforementioned sound carries over as an undertone and is transformed by a counterpoint of predominantly black sonic practices from the year 1970, including Alice Coltrane, Alvin Singleton, Milford Graves, and Yusef Lateef. 

Johnson’s Glass House was completed in 1949, the same year that RCA Victor released the first 

45 RPM singles. 

SIDE A [3:36]

RPM (revolutions per minute), 2018

Singing Bowl, Glass Bowl, Digital Tone. All 528 HZ, a healing frequency.

SIDE B [3:19]

Year of Construction: 1970, 2018

Sourced from: Dorothy Ashby, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Alice Coltrane, Miles Davis, Svein Finnerud Trio, Milford Graves, Andrew Hill, Yusef Lateef, “The Lumpen” Black Panther Party Revolutionary Band, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, and Alvin Singleton. All composed or recorded in 1970.

"Typically, I listen to music when I make work, but right now I’m in a gap of quiet in the studio. I need that aural palate cleanser and a moment to be still, so that I can return to music with new energy. Silence has an important role in my work, and there’s a formal relationship between my use of silence and historical silencing more broadly. Modernism in America was shaped during the postwar period, at a time when so much exciting Black music was also being made, but the bridge between the two was never built. My aesthetic strategies allow me to talk about the absence of these histories and push them to the fore. For example, my sculpture of a one-string at The Met is an homage to Louis Dotson and Moses Williams, two improvisers from Mississippi who performed on handmade versions of the instrument, and whose contributions to the history of avant-garde music have been all but forgotten.”

- Jennie C Jones

John Lennon | Piece for George Maciunas Who Can't Distinguish Between These Colors

John Lennon

Piece for George Maciunas Who Can't Distinguish Between These Colors

New York City, USA: Fluxus, 1971

12 x 24 x 2.5 cm.

Edition size unknown (only prototypes may exist)

Little is known about this work. It was never advertised in any of the Fluxus newsletters or mentioned in Maciunas' prolific correspondence (unlike countless other editions which were proposed but never materialized). However at least two copies exist: one in the Getty collection and other in the legendary Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus collection, now housed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. 

The work is proposed as a gift to Maciunas (who was colour blind) but the typewritten card displays the hallmarks of his design, suggesting it was intended as a Fluxus edition. [The Independent claims that the card was typed by Lennon]

The piece is very poorly documented, with only the above closed colour image from the MoMa and the black & white thumbnail available. 

"It was typical, perhaps even symptomatic that he used only black and white. He saw the world in sharp, moral terms, not in moderated shades of gray. Awake to the myriad logic forks in a chess game, he was insensitive to the hundreds of thousands of colors that human eyes distinguish. Someone once told me that George was color-blind. Perhaps it was true. If so, I can understand it.”

- Ken Friedman

Flux Post Kit 7

[Fluxus]

Flux Post Kit 7

New York City, USA: Fluxus, 1968

17.9 x 13.5 x 4.8 cm.

Edition size unknown

In March of 1967, a Fluxus newsletter included a call to artists to submit works for a forthcoming Flux-postal kit: "All are invited to submit ideas and participate, ideas can be either ready pictorial material or

just specified material which we have to find, produce or obtain otherwise [...] We will issue a 100 stamp sheet, each row (10 stamps) designed by different participant. Images can also be drawings, prints, engravings, letters, etc. etc."

Previously, George Maciunas had written to Ben Vautier: “We will also come out with 100 fluxstamps - collective designs, by various people - so let me know your ideas. All you need to do is send drawing, picture, anything. If it is halftone (dotted) it should be about same size as stamp, because dots can’t be reduced to over 120 lines per inch...”

The eventual work consisted of repackaged earlier Fluxus projects, such as stamps by Bob Watts and postcards by Watts and Vautier, as well as three new rubber stamps: Ken Friedman's Inconsequential is Coming, James Riddle's Everything and Ben Vautier's Ben Certifies this to be a work of Fluxart. 

John Held, Jr. maintains that this work is the first time a rubber stamp was included as part of an artists’ multiple. 

Contents varied in the kits, and some would also include selections from Robert Filliou and Daniel Spoerri's Monsters are Inoffensive cards, cards by George Brecht, etc. etc.

The plastic box featured an offset label designed by George Maciunas, who compiled the kit. His mechanical for the cover and for Vautier’s stamp are below, both housed in the collection of the MoMA. The materials listed are “ink, presstype, and correction fluid on paper”.

It is unclear what the 7 in the title refers to. 

The kit initially sold for $8, or $2 without the rubber stamps. It was designed as an unlimited edition, but reportedly only ten to twenty boxes were ever compiled. 

Yayoi Kusama | Yayoi Snow Globe

Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Snow Globe

New York City, USA: The Museum of Modern Art, 2018

7 x 7 x 7 cm.

Edition size unknown

Sometime last year curator Matthew Higgs proposed on Instagram that someone write a book on the subject of “Artist’s Merch”. He posted an image of David Shrigley’s Heroin and Cocaine salt & pepper shakers to illustrate his point. 

This Yayoi Snow Globe snow globe would better represent the idea of Artists’ Merch - museum gift shop shlock that borrows the form of an artist’s edition. Items made with little input from the artist, designed as a keepsake souvenir of the accompanying exhibition. 

I have a Yoko Ono snowdome that fits the bill: produced by the Art Gallery of Ontario when they presented her YES retrospective, it consisted of two snow related texts from Grapefruit inserted into one of those cheap “add your own picture” globes. 

I’m happy to have it, and would likely pick up Yayoi Snow Globe, on sale. 

It’s a small glass and resin snowglobe featuring a portrait of the artist dressed in her signature red and white polka-dot patterned dress. When shaken, mirrored orbs not unlike those from Kusama's iconic Narcissus Garden float gracefully within the globe, in place of snow. 

 

 

Banksy | Welcome Mat

Banksy

Welcome Mat

Brighton, UK: Love Welcomes, 2020

46 × 71 cm.

Unlimited edition

Launched in 2017 as response to the refugee crisis in Greece, Love Welcomes is a "creative social enterprise that helps displaced women begin to stitch their lives back together." 

This open edition Welcome mat features hand-stitched fabric from life vests abandoned on the beaches of the Mediterranean.

Today Reuters outed Banksy in a painfully long article debunking the previous popular theory that he was Robert Del Naja, of the Bristol trip-hop group Massive Attack. It turns out Banksy is Robin Gunningham, 52, also from Bristol and a friend of Del Naja.