AA Bronson | Public Apology to Siksika Nation

AA Bronson
Public Apology to Siksika Nation
Toronto, Canada: Toronto Biennial of Art, 2019
160 pp., 17 x 11 x 1 cm., softcover
Edition of 14000

A free publication given away at the Toronto Biennial of Art, which closes tomorrow. Funded by the Canada Council for the Arts New Chapter Grant, the book is part of Bronson's largest installation, and is presented next to the work of Adrian Stimson, a Siksika artist who responds to the piece.

The title includes an essay by Ben Miller, who served as Bronson's research assistant while working on this project. His text can be read, in full, here.



"I’m doing a project called “Public Apology to Siksika Nation.” I want to apologize on behalf of my great-grandfather. Through doing the research on this, I met Adrian Stimson, who’s a Siksika native. He’s a Canadian artist who about a year ago moved back to the reserve. He was living in Saskatoon, and incidentally he received the Governor General’s Award a few weeks ago. I am working on the project together with him.

[...]

"My great-grandfather founded one of the first residential schools, somewhere between 1883–1884. And, well, the little drama that happened; he was only there for 11 years, and then he was transferred to another reserve because there was a kind of uprising, which has been squashed in written history. You can’t find documentation of it; it’s very, very difficult to find anything about it. But what we know happened was there was a tuberculosis epidemic amongst the children in the school. [With] tuberculosis, you need lots of air and sunlight, and you need to get out into the open air. He was more or less locking the kids in school. He wouldn’t let their parents see them once they were sick because he was afraid the parents would get them to revert from Christianity back to paganism, and then they’d die of the disease, and their souls would go to hell because they weren’t Christian. So he kept them locked up in the school, and they died in the school without ever seeing their parents."

- AA Bronson, in conversation with Dorian Batycka

Yoko Ono | Ask the Clouds to Remember

Yoko Ono
Ask the Clouds to Remember
New York City, USA: Self-published, 2013
17.14 x 11.43 cm.
Edition of 65 signed and numbered copies

Maurizio Nannucci | NOMOREEXCUSES

Maurizio Nannucci
NOMOREEXCUSES
Bologna, Italy: Galleria d'Arte Enrico Astuni, 2016
15 x 157.5 cm. (open), 10.5 x 15 cm. (closed))
Edition of 99 signed and numbered copies

A laser-engraved leporello artist book on gold paper featuring the same text that the artist used in a major installation light work the year prior (below).

NOMOREEXCUSES is valued at between two and three thousand dollars.

The Pipe: Recent Czech Concrete Poetry

bpNichol and Jiri Valoch [editors]
The Pipe: Recent Czech Concrete Poetry
Toronto, Canada: Ganglia Press, 1973
[26] pp., 32.5 x 23.5 cm., loose leaves
Edition of 750

bpNichol began grOnk with David UU (David W. Harris) in 1967, as an offshoot of Ganglia Press. The imprint was mostly devoted mostly to visual poetry. A series of sporadic pamphlets and booklets continued under the imprint until Nichol's death in 1988. More than a hundred grOnk items were published, with The Pipe one of the most ambitious (most others were cheaply produced mimeographed and stapled booklets).

Published as gRoNK series 6, numbers 6&7, and printed at Coach House Press this collection of Czech poets was edited by Nichol and the poet/artist Jiri Valoch. The collection featured concrete poetry (presented both typographically and photographically) by artists living in Czechoslovakia, with the exception of Ludwig Feller, a resident of West Germany.

Twenty six loose cards of different sizes (one folded) were housed in a cardboard box. The contents include: 

Karel Trinkewitz: "poem-object", "text", "poem-object", "poem-object"

Jiri Valock: "hommage to stockhausen" (1967), "textfragment" (1970), "poem score (random text 1970)", "typewriter poem (1965), "found concrete poem (1970)

Jan Wojnar: "processual poem" (1970), "processual poem" (1970), "processual poem" (1970)

Karel Milota & Jaroslav Koch: "a question and its romantic parasits"

Ladislav Nebesky: "number poem", "number poem"

Ludvik Feller: Untitled, Untitled

 J. H. Kocman: "All written on this page is a poem by J H Kocman" (pictured above)

Karel Adamus:"four variations of poem" (1970)

Jaroslav Malina: "three photopoems"

Jiri Valoch: "air (landpoem - 1970)"

Josef Honys: "poem", "knight-text"

Ladislav Nebesky: Untitled


Produced in an edition of 750 copies, the box is now rare and valued at a few hundred dollars, depending on condition.

Kara Walker | (Untitled] Pitcher

Kara Walker
(Untitled] Pitcher
New York City, USA: Artwork Editions,
8.25 x 7.6 x 5.75"
Edition of 1000 numbered copies

A white porcelain pitcher by Kara Walker featuring two of her signature black silhouettes. The artist's signature is stamped on the bottom and each pitcher is individually numbered. A signed and numbered certificate of authenticity issued by the manufacturer Bernardaud accompanies each example.

Available from the publisher, here, for $725.

Walker turns fifty today.

Ian Hamilton Finlay | 4 Baskets

Ian Hamilton Finlay
4 Baskets
Little Sparta, Scotland: Wild Hawthorn Press 1990, 1991.
[unpaginated], softcover
Edition of 250


"Each page features a drawing, by Kathleen Lindsley, of a wicker basket; the drawings are detailed, realistic, and charming. Each drawing has as a title a single word, an adjective drawn from the cultural vocabulary of the Enlightenment. The  first basket is entitled "Domestic" and it contains three French loaves and a bottle of wine; the second is entitled “Pastoral,” and it contains a fishing net and
an abundant sheaf of corn; the third is entitled “Parnassian,” and it contains a wreath of laurel leaves, the poet’s crown; the fourth is entitled “Sublime,” and it contains two severed heads."

- Stephen Scobie

Timm Ulrichs | 1984 (Spion-Buch)

Timm Ulrichs
1984 (Spion-Buch)
Self-published, 1971/75
17.8 x 11.8 x 2.7 cm.
Edition of 100 signed and numbered copies


A boxed version of George Orwell's novel 1984, altered to include a peep hole.

This week on Tumblr: Herman de Vries

https://artistsbooksandmultiples.tumblr.com/tagged/herman-de-vries

Carlos Cruz-Diez | Chromoscope

Carlos Cruz-Diez
Chromoscope
Paris, France: Denise René, 1968
7 x 15.6 x 14.6 cm.
Edition size unknown

The Venezuelan artist's signature viewing device, made made of board, PVC, and nylon, which is signed, dated, titled and numbered. The work is valued at approximately $10 000 US.

"The Chromoscope is an instrument for us to carry, as we would carry a spyglass. It is an instrument intended to operate the transfiguration of the nocturnal landscape of large cities. Its attraction does not reside on the object itself but on the visual event that it generates. It is a piece that acts as intermediary between the reality and our eye, conditioning our sight to a new perception of our surroundings."