A Handmade Assembly

The A Handmade Assembly book we initiated while at Struts, as a Covid replacement for a beloved community event, was the subject of an article in the Globe and Mail last week, which I’m just now learning about. Rebecca Tucker and photographer Fred Lum followed designer Lauren Wickware as she prepared the book for print:

"Published in 2023, A Handmade Assembly is, Wickware says, not just a record of the exhibition, but also an extension of it. “Even if you never attended the event, you could have a similar experience” by flipping through the book.

This is largely because it’s no ordinary coffee-table tome: A Handmade Assembly is a hardcover chronicle that features images of past exhibitions, collages, knitting patterns and even an image of a hammer, marked up paper doll-style, that encourages readers to rip the page out and fold the hammer into a 3-D paper tool.”

Read the article here and see earlier post on the book here. 

Mirrors

 

Jiri Valoch | Four very similar ideas

Jiri Valoch

Four very similar ideas

Self-published, 1974/76

38 x 54 cm.

Edition of 70 [+15 AP] signed, dated and numbered copies

Serigraphy on thick paper.

Allan Kaprow | Collagen, Environments, Videos, Broschüren, Geschichten, Happening und Activity-Dokumente 1956-1986.

Allan Kaprow

Collagen, Environments, Videos, Broschüren, Geschichten, Happening und Activity-Dokumente 1956-1986. 

Dortmund, Germany: Museum am Ostwall, 1986

150 pp., 27.5 x 17 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

An exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with a career retrospective show held August 24th to October 5th, 1986. Kaprow invited friends and colleagues (Wolfgang Feelisch, Inge Baecker, Robert C. Morgan, Milan Knizák, Barbara Smith, Joachim Diederichs) to write about him and his work, from both personal and critical positions. The title also includes a discussion between the artist and Wolf Vostell, as well as a bibliography and artist's exhibition history. Text in English and German. 

Designed by Kaprow, the book features a corrugated cardboard cover, held together with two brass screws. 

Who Has Seen The Wind?

Adjusting for inflation, Gone with the Wind (1939) is the top film grossing of all time. The Wizard of Oz - released the same year, and also directed by Victor Fleming - opens with the sound of wind. Oz fan David Lynch will often instruct his actors "More wind," when he wants them to imbue mystery and intrigue into a scene.

Wind is useful in an establishing shot of a film, so the audience does not misconstrue it as a still photograph. Swaying trees or tumbling tumbleweeds remind us we are watching a “moving picture”. Similarly, puppeteers leave the mouths of their puppets agape when they are in the background and not speaking, otherwise they may appear as inanimate objects. A close-up of a digital clock always catches the minute changing, and is often accompanied by a beep that would drive anyone crazy who actually had to listen to the sound 1440 times a day. 

Tonight in Pittsburgh, Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis open a new show titled On Air. At the centre of his exhibition at 820 Gallery is The Wind, a new film work that compiles over a thousand clips from cinema featuring wind. They were diligently working on the piece last month when they hosted us,  and I have every confidence it’s going to be excellent. 

The opening runs tonight from 5:30 to 9pm at 820 Liberty Avenue. The exhibition continues until December 15th, Wednesday–Sunday 11am–5pm and free to the public. 

Merce Cunningham

Merce Cunningham died on this day in 2009, at the age of 90. Above are posters for his dance company, designed by Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, Joan Miró, Jasper Johns, and Niki de Saint-Phalle.

Primary Information Sale

For the next 24 hours, all titles at the Primary Information site are discounted by 50%. 

The above collection of three Something Else Press works is available for only five dollars, for example. The new Fluxus newspaper reprint is only ten dollars. 

https://primaryinformation.org/

David Shrigley | I Am The Jug You Are The Glass

David Shrigley

I Am The Jug You Are The Glass

Copenhagen, Denmark: Shrig Shop, 2022

320 pp., 15.5 x 21 x 4 cm., hardcover

Edition of 5000

Shrigley’s first book self-published through the Shrig Shop, is a black and white The book is a black and white collection of over 300 drawings made in the last five years. It is has been published in a limited edition of 5000 books, never to be printed again.

“Publishing with a bigger publisher is a bit of a pain in the arse because you have to do it on their terms and jump through a lot of hoops. I always end up really surprised at what people choose. They don’t choose the things that I think are brilliant and amazing. [...]

[The book form] is a way to give meaning to lots of individual parts, which are then presented as a whole. That’s what I like about it. It is about whatever the reader thinks it’s about.

I don’t know if I necessarily have a lot to say, but I have a need to say it, whatever it is. There’s definitely a difference there.” 

- David Shrigley

David Hammons

David Hammons was born on this day in 1943. 

Ness Lee | Connected, Here Together

Ness Lee

Connected, Here Together

Toronto, Canada: The Art Gallery of York University, 2020

Enamelled zinc alloy lapel pin

Edition of 250

"Ness Lee’s distinctive style comes from their thoughtful reflection on intimacy and self-love, allowing for vulnerability, discomfort, and acceptance. Lee intertwines historical occurrences with personal narratives to create tender and ethereal artworks. This artist multiple was commissioned by the AGYU in conjunction with a mural developed in collaboration between Lee and York University’s TBLGAY, a safer space for the queer, trans, and asexual community on campus. AGYU imagined this intricate work as a symbol of connectedness during this time of global isolation.

Nee Lee’s work has been featured at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, and the Art Gallery of Hamilton, as well as numerous art galleries in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Montreal, and Toronto. Lee has also participated in mural festivals across Canada and internationally in Hyderabad, India, and Cozumel, Mexico.”

- publisher’s statement

Barbara Kruger | Picture/ Readings

Barbara Kruger

Picture/ Readings

N.P.: Self-published, 1978

[44] pp., 14.5 x 22.5 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

The artist’s first bookwork, now scarce and valued at $1500 US. 

“...we might consider Kruger’s “Picture/Readings,” a series that necessitates a sustained engagement with its sentences and stories that precedes and even precludes our desire to fold them into critique. Completed in 1978 and self-published, “Picture/Readings” combines images, largely of the exteriors of houses in Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Deerfield Beach, Florida, with texts of filmic, novelistic, and melodramatic ambitions. Rather than short bursts of words scattered among images, the stories in Picture/Readings are long by comparison to Kruger’s more famous work and unceremoniously formatted in blocks. If one wanted to write a dissertation on “Picture/Readings,” one could certainly argue for the importance of architecture in Kruger’s photo-collages, since they are themselves syntactic architectures made from blocks of text and image building upon each other. What is there to be said, however, about Kruger’s words here? They are not declarations, but rather stories or narrative scaffoldings that interweave and become the built environments of a life, a psyche, a series of loves and disappointments, of bodies that come together and disentangle. For us to allow Barbara Kruger to tell a story would change everything.”

- William J. Simmons, Flash Art

Bob Watts | Male Underpants

Bob Watts

Male Underpants

New York City, USA: Implosions, Inc., [circa 1966]

33 x 22 cm.

Edition size unknown

The companion to Female Underpants (see previous post) these works are also screenprinted onto fabric. And like the female counterpart, they are also printed onto women’s underpants, presumably as the Y-Front interfered with the image. Unlike Female Underpants, these are not adorned with a flower. 

The penis reportedly belongs to sculptor John Chamberlain.

Bob Watts | Female Underpants

Bob Watts

Female Underpants

New York City, USA: Implosions, Inc., [circa 1966]

33 x 28 cm.

Edition size unknown

Not as popular as the shirt printed with an image of breasts (which had a wide reach, including a Rolling Stones album cover), these Female Underpants consist of a screen-printed image of pubic hair and a flower, on fabric. 

The work was first mentioned in a Fluxus newsletter in 1965 (where they were discussed as potential costumes in a forthcoming Fluxus concert, which doesn't seem to have happened), and were originally offered for $5.00 a pair. 

Implosions Inc. was a company set up by Watts, Herman Fine, and George Maciunas, intended as a more populist novelty operation, to function as a fundraising arm of Fluxus. Watts and Maciunas shared a love of what the latter referred to as ‘functionality'. The example he used to define this term was the Fluxus Apron, which was printed with a medical image of the stomach, over the area where the wearer’s stomach would be. 

For Male Underpants, see next post.