N.E. Thing Co.: Companies Act (Volume 1)

N.E. Thing Company / Jean-Christophe Ammann

N.E. Thing Co.: Companies Act (Volume 1)

Vancouver, Canada: Self-published, 1978

362 pp, 21.3 x 27.5 cm., softcover

Edition of 500

In 1978, the curator at the Kunsthalle Basel, Jean-Christophe Ammann, curated an exhibition of Canadian Art in Switzerland. The show included work by Ian Carr-Harris, Robin Collyer, Greg Curnoe, Paterson Ewen, Eric Fischl, Genral Idea, Vincent Tangredi, Shirley Wiitasalo, Susan Briton, Colin Campbell, General Idea, Noel Harding. Lisa Steele, Vincent Trasov, Rodney Werden and the N.E.Thing Company Ltd.1

While researching the exhibition, Ammann visited the N.E. Thing Co. headquarters in Vancouver (which doubled as the home of Co-Presidents Iain and Ingrid Baxter) to discuss how best to present their work. A single piece would "not be representative of the total sum of work produced" and displaying everything would have dominated the exhibition. It was decided that a large volume, resembling a phonebook, might be the best way to present the full scope of the duo's output. 

The resulting artists' book/monograph is a compendium of ideas, activities, press clippings, and ephemera befitting an artistic collaboration operated as a corporate entity. 

Art Collectives in Canada often played with the trappings of business (Image Bank issued Annual Reports, General Idea operated as Art Official, running Art Metropole and FILE megazine, etc.) but N.E. Thing Company made this approach central to their activities.2

In 1969, the Baxters annexed the first floor of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, as a new centre for their administrative work. They erected oak-panelled partitioned walls, rented desks, chairs, telephones and potted plants. Eleven departments - Research, Thing, Photography, Printing, Consulting, ART (“aesthetically rejected things”), ACT (“aesthetically claimed things”), COP, Movie, Project and Accounting - were set up, and secretaries hired to work them. The month-long exhibition was often confused for a new enterprise in town, particularly as the gallery then occupied a building that formerly housed government offices. 

In 1972, N.E.Thing Company Ltd did what any respectable corporate entity does to illustrate that they are a responsible community member - they sponsored a Little League Hockey team. The Downsview Ontario Pee-Wee team wore jersey's emblazoned with the company name and the team portrait (complete with cardboard frame) was editioned and sold as an artwork (see below, bottom). 

Five years later, they opened Eye Scream3, a commercial ice cream restaurant, on West Fourth Avenue in Vancouver. Designed by NETCO, the dishware was produced in an edition of 500. Not unlike the grocery store items in the 1984 film Repo Man (or PIL's album Album, a few years later), each item was labelled in the store's distinctive block font: Plate, Saucer, Dish, Bowl, Cup (see below). 

These projects, and countless others, are documented in Companies Act, and arranged chronologically. Rather than beginning with the founding of the company in 1966, or the incorporation three years later via the Companies Act that provides the book its title, the volume begins with the artists' birth certificates. Each new year is represented by a photograph of the shoreline, with the year written in the sand. In the final image, the water encroaches and washes it all away. 

The book is both the first major volume published on the partnership, and also one of their last efforts. The Baxter's divorced shortly afterwards and the company was dissolved. 

Now exceedingly rare, Companies Act was republished by Brick Press last year (see next post). 

“THE N.E. THING COMPANY has developed itself as a factory of ideas, which is far too preoccupied with the production and realization of new ideas to pay much attention to the archival end.”

— Jean-Christophe Ammann (N.E. Thing Co. Companies Act 4)

1. Kanadische Kunstler ran from June 10th to July 16th, 1978. See catalogue cover, below. 

2. Artist Ryan Suter recently suggested that the failure of Artist Run Centres in Canada to resist the bureaucracy of corporate structures could be a residual outcome of the impact of these various enterprises. 

3. The full incorporated name was I Scream You Scream We All Scream for Eye Scream Parlour. See below. Next door is a photo lab that the couple also operated as a functioning business.