Claude Closky | Not Serif

Claude Closky
Not Serif
Toronto, Canada: Bookclub, 2014
54 x 35 cm.
Edition of 60

Bookclub is a group of Toronto artists, publishers, curators, writers, etc. who collect artists' books. The group includes myself, Roula Partheniou, Micah Lexier, Bill Clarke, Paul Van Kooy, Sarah Robayo Sheridan, Michael Klein, Wendy Gomoll, Derek McCormack and Derek Sullivan. We get together a few times a year at each others homes and share recent acquisitions. Sometimes we impose ourselves onto the homes of other artist book collectors, and occasionally we give public presentations (most recently at the Whitechapel in London).

After one of these public talks (at The Power Plant, 2011) we decided we decided to spend our fee on the production of book bag. We commissioned our friend Michael DuMontier - an artist for whom the form of the book plays a large part in his practice - to produce the inaugural project. This was followed by Kay Rosen, who had just produced an edition with Paul+Wendy Projects (here).

The 2014 bag was just produced, by French artist Claude Closky. In an email to Micah Lexier (who handled the production), he wrote:

It figures a thing, a text, to be carried. 
It is actually a thick line bent seven time. There is a little variation between the front and the back of the book bag. 
The title is ‘Not Serif’, but it shouldn't be printed on the bag, because I want it to simply allude to tangible stuff moved around. 

Two similar projects by the artist can be seen on his website, here and here. An article about Bookclub can be read at Shelflife, here.