Kay Rosen

Happy Birthday to Kay Rosen. 

Happy Birthday to Michael Dumontier

Bibliography

 

My relationship with gallerist Michael Klein can be traced back to our shared love of books and records. We met when he would come to Art Metropole on Friday nights, for Cocktails. He had worked there a decade or so before me, and left to raise his two children. 

Once they were old enough, he decided to open his own commercial gallery, and invited Roula and I to join the roster. At the time (reductively) I made records and she made books. The three of us are also in Bookclub together, a group of ten artists, authors, publishers and curators who collect artists’ publications (the others members are Micah Lexier, Bill Clarke, Paul Van Kooy, Wendy Gomoll, Derek Sullivan, Sarah Robayo Sheridan, and Dereck McCormack). 

In 2018, MKG127 hosted a show called Record Shop, in which artists such as Sonny Assu, Deanna Bowen, Geoffrey Pugen, Marla Hlady, Christof Migone, Eleanor King, Jacob Whibley, Michael Dumontier, Suzie Smith, Instant Coffee, Jeffrey & Humphrey and Laura Kikauka presented work made with “record shop materials”, such as posters and playlists, and the vinyl record itself (it’s “material and sentiment”). 

Five years later, the gallery follows up with an exhibition about books. Titled, Bibliography, the show explores various formal and conceptual investigations into the form of the folio, the codex, etc. It opens today at 2pm. 

My contribution is the size-as photo above, titled Nothing To Infinity. 

For more information, see the press release below or visit the gallery website, here. 

July 8 – August 19

Opening Saturday, July 8, 2-5 PM

MKG127 is excited to present Bibliography, a group exhibition including new and existing works by gallery artists including:

Dean Baldwin Lew, Alan Belcher, Adam David Brown, Bill Burns, Michael Dumontier, Dave Dyment, Liza Eurich, Sara Graham, Instant Coffee, Laura Kikauka, Kristiina Lahde, Jason Lujan, Gwen MacGregor, John Marriott, Luke Parnell, Roula Partheniou, Geoffrey Pugen, Jayce Salloum, Monica Tap, Joy Walker, and Laurel Woodcock.

The format of the book has proved remarkably resilient in the face of breakthroughs in other technologies. Its early demise has been predicted continually – with the advent of cinema, television, the personal computer and the e-book reader. Even the phonograph was once cause for alarm, as evidenced in Octave Uzanne’s short story from 1894, The End of Books:

“If by books you are to be understood as referring to our innumerable collections of paper, printed, sewed, and bound in a cover announcing the title of the work, I own to you frankly that I do not believe (and the progress of electricity and modern mechanism forbids me to believe) that Gutenberg’s invention can do otherwise than sooner or later fall into desuetude as a means of current interpretation of our mental products.”

Bibliophiles needn’t have worried. While the death knell rang throughout the last century-plus, the codex held steady. Today physical books still outsell their electronic counterparts four-to-one. Sixty-eight percent of readers between the age of 18 and 29 prefer printed volumes, suggesting the trend is not drifting downward.

This exhibition celebrates the multi-faceted form of the book with a wide array of treatments, from foregrounding text, typography, the page, the title, or the cover, to using the form of the book as context for content.

This week on Tumblr: Michael Dumontier

This week on Tumblr: Michael Dumontier, including collaborations with Neil Farber, the Royal Art Lodge and Micah Lexier, and publications for Paul + Wendy Projects, Bookclub, Martha Street Studio, Nothing Else Press, etc.

https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/michael-dumontier

/edition Toronto: Bookclub

Above are a few images from the Powerpoint slide show that I'm currently compiling for Bookclub's  Saturday presentation at /edition Toronto. Included so far are samples from postcard sets from the collection of Michael Klein, an Endre Tót work from Micah Lexier, Bill Clarke's Dieter Roth book, and the Smallest Book, by Himaa, from Derek McCormack's collection of packaged items.

Bookclub events are typically held in the member's homes, but periodically the group ventures out to give public presentations, using the speaker fees to fund the yearly production of a Book bag (Michael Dumontier, Kay Rosen, Claude Closky, Sara Mackillop, etc.)

Details for the event are below, or at http://www.editiontoronto.com/programming/

Book Club
SAT OCT 29 at 4:00 PM
Since 2008, ten of Toronto’s most dedicated collectors and aficionados of artist’s books, editions and ephemera have been meeting as Book Club. At these meetings, the curators, collectors and artists who make up the group share their latest acquisitions with each other in what they describe as “show and tell for book-loving grown-ups.”

Members of the group have agreed to do a public “show and tell” of rare and interesting items from their collections. Book Club’s presentation will be a unique opportunity to see and learn about rare artist’s books and editions that usually remain securely under glass when exhibited in galleries and museums.

The members of Book Club include: Micah Lexier, Sarah Robayo Sheridan, Derek Sullivan, Bill Clarke, Dave Dyment, Roula Partheniou, Paul Van Kooy, Wendy Gomoll, Derek McCormack and Michael Klein. Members of Book Club have presented items from their collections in talks at The Power Plant and the London Art Book Fair (Whitechapel Gallery, U.K.)

Sara MacKillop | I've Got My New Argos Catalogue

Sara MacKillop
I've Got My New Argos Catalogue
Toronto, Canada: Bookclub, 2015
41 x 43 cm.
Edition of 45

For the fourth consecutive year, Bookclub (myself and 9 other artists, curators, publishers, collectors, gallerists, etc.) have produced a canvas bookbag in December. These are typically funded through speaking engagements by the group. They are not for sale, and are distributed to the artist, Bookclub members and a few friends. Michael Dumontier produced the first bag in 2012, Kay Rosen the second in 2013, and Claude Closky in 2014.

The 2015 bag is by Sara MacKillop.

Argos is one of the largest retailers operating in the United Kingdom and Ireland, with over 750 stores and 800 million website visits a year. It was estimated last year that 96% of the population of the UK was within 10 miles of an Argos branch. The company produced a yearly catalogue (see below) and it's launch was an anticipated event, not dissimilar to the Sears Wishbook in Canada (in its heyday) and Ikea worldwide. Argos would set up kiosks in train stations and distribute the catalogues to commuters, who would travel their trip with a plastic carrier bag that read "I've got my new Argos catalogue".

With a move towards online operations the catalogue has been discontinued in many areas of the country and seriously scaled back in the others. Here MacKillop takes the discontinued, disposable shopping bag from the UK and relocates it to Toronto (where it's origins would rarely be known) and repurposes it as a permanent, sturdy canvas bag.