Fiona Banner | Don't Look Back

Fiona Banner

Don't Look Back

London, UK/Dundee, Scotland: Frith Street Gallery/The Visual Research Center, 1999

[99] pp., 85 x 68.5 x 4.5 cm., loose leaves

Edition of 25 signed, numbered and dated copies [+6 AP]

As far back as 1994, Fiona Banner has been creating handwritten and printed "wordscapes" that retell feature films (Point Break, The Desert, etc.). Her 1997 massive, thousand-page artist book THE NAM recounted the plots of six Vietnam War films in their entirety: Apocalypse Now, Born on the Fourth of July, The Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill and Platoon. She later turned to pornographic films, with written accounts of such titles as Asswoman in Wonderland. 

Don't Look Back recounts D.A. Pennebaker’s celebrated 1967 Bob Dylan tour documentary of the same name. For the first time in her practice, the artist retells the film entirely from memory (it was not available on video at the time, and the work predated streaming platforms). The small typefaces and lettering Banner employs makes it difficult to read the piece from beginning to end - mirroring the inaccuracies of memory. 

This portfolio version of Don’t Look Back contains three versions of the work: an exhibition version, a cabinet version and a compressed version, each printed on Febigon Splendorlux metal argento paper and presented in a clamshell box. 

Because it is intended to be pasted to the wall, the exhibition version may only be used once. Each time the piece is installed, a new set of sheets must be ordered from the publishers. Other specifications include that only one version may be exhibited at a time, and that the portfolio box may or may not be included in the exhibition, presented on a plinth near the panels.