Dave Allen | The Mirrored Catalogue D'Oiseaux

Dave Allen
The Mirrored Catalogue D'Oiseaux
Berlin, Germany: Boileau & Narcejac, 2003
7” vinyl 45rpm record
Edition of 150, some copies are signed.

According to Discogs, who offer a copy of the record for CA$63.95, here, this is the third and final release by the 7" label, with the first two being Jonathan Monk's My Mother Cleaning My Father's Piano and Douglas Gordon's Bootlegged. All three artists are close friends and have previously collaborated on the 12" record For Those About To Rock (2000), along with Ross Sinclair, who provides text for The Mirrored Catalogue D'Oiseaux.

The recording documents an installation in 2002 in which the artist subjected mocking birds to the sound of French Composer Olivier Messiaen's Catalogue D'Oiseaux, an experimental composition for piano, based on bird songs. Towards the end of the exhibition the mocking birds begin mimicking the sound of the piano melodies. Nature reflecting art reflecting nature. 

Fischli & Weiss: Rock on Top of Another Rock

[Line Ulekleiv, ed]
Fischli & Weiss: Rock on Top of Another Rock
Oslo, Copenhagen: Forlaget Press, 2014
176 pp., 22.5 x 16.5 cm., hardcover
Edition size unknown

Released late February, this exhibition catalogue accompanied a year long presentation that ended in March of this year. The book is edited by Line Ulekleiv and features a foreword by Jan Andresen, Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist, with other texts by Pernille Albrethsen, John Kelsey, and Patrick Frey. It documents Rock on Top of Another Rock, the first public sculpture by Fischli & Weiss to be presented in the UK. The monumental work, installed in Hyde Park, near the Serpentine Gallery, the work was undertaken in tandem with the pairs’s rock project in Valdresflya, Norway.

Marcel Broodthaers | The Manuscript found in a Bottle

Marcel Broodthaers
The Manuscript found in a Bottle
Berlin, Germany: Edition René Block, 1974
glass, cardboard and paper
30.5 x 8 x 7.5 cm.
Edition of 120 signed and numbered copies

Lawrence Weiner | 10 Works

Lawrence Weiner
10 Works
Paris, France: Yvon Lambert, 1970
[80] pp., 17 x 11 cm., softcover
Edition of 1000

Available from D&E Lake for $115.00 US, here.

Bob Watts | Light Flux Kit

Bob Watts
Light Flux Kit
New York City, USA: Fluxus, 1973
33 x 21.8 x 9 cm
Edition size unknown

A George Maciunas designed label on Canal Street compartmentalized box containing “peculiar light bulbs, chemical light, optics, etc.” As with most Fluxus editions, the contents varied.

Maciunas described this work in a letter to collector Hans Sohm in 1972 as “very nice item, but not cheap” and gave the price as $60.00. A year later it was listed in Fluxus newsletters as $100. The work is available from Hundertmark Gallery, here, for 4800 Euro.

Xavier Antin | Just In Time

Xavier Antin
Just In Time
London, UK: Self-published, 2010
42 pp., 21 x 29 cm., staple-bound
Edition of 100

Subtitled A Short History of Desktop Publishing, this title documents the separation of four colour printing into a history lesson of desktop publishing. The magenta for each image is first printed on a stencil duplicator (or mimeograph) from 1880, and then feeds into a Spirit Duplicator from 1923, which adds the cyan. The black is printed by a laser printer from 1969 and the yellow is then added from an inkjet printer from 1976.

Visit the artist's website, here, for more information.

The copy below (which lists itself as being from a 'second run' of 30 copies, but also is numbered 34) belongs to printer/publisher/artist/Art Metropole board member JP King. I visited his studio yesterday, alongside two students from ESA who are themselves prolific makers of 'zines and had expressed interest in his Risograph machine (see bottom picture). King calls the book his "prized possession". Visit King's Paper Pusher site, here.

Paul McCarthy | Low Life Slow Life

Paul McCarthy
Low Life Slow Life
San Francisco, USA: CCA Wattis Institute, 2010
640 pp., softcover in a Tide box
Edition size unknown

Packaged in a retro detergent box (circa 1973) this hefty volume documents a two-part exhibition at San Francisco’s CCA Wattis Institute that began in February of 2008. Curator Jens Hoffmann invited the artist to curate an exhibition of his own work, accompanied by works by other artists that he considered significant to his early-period career.

The catalogue showcases a vast range of works that have influenced McCarthy’s practice, with reproductions of artists' ephemera, personal letters, musical scores, reprinted essays and reviews from periodicals such as Artforum, Avalanche, High Performance, Vision and Parkett, and excerpts from artists' monographs spanning from the 1960s to the near-present.

The artists include Joseph Beuys, Gunter Brus, Bruce Conner, Howard Fried, Dan Graham,  Allan Kaprow (Assemblage, Environments & Happenings), Rachel Khedoori, Yves Klein (Dimanche), Tetsumi Kudo, Yayoi Kusama, Maria Lassnig, Robert Mallary, Gustav Metzger (Auto-destructive art manifesto), Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono (Grapefruit), Lil Picard, Jason Rhoades, Dieter Roth, Barbara Smith, Stan VanDerBeek, Andy Warhol and many others.

The catalogue also includes an interview with the artist and an essay on his work by Watts Institute curator Jens Hoffmann.

Shinro Ohtake's Scrapbooks

Shinro Ohtake's Scrapbooks showcased at the 55th Venice International Art Exhibition, Venice, Italy,  2013. For a brief video tour of the works, see the youtube clip, here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RRl_tt-yuQ