This week on Tumblr: Wallets

This week on Tumblr: wallets and billfolds by Group Material, Dean Baldwin, Rosemarie Trockel, Sam Cotter, David Shrigley, Keith Haring, Masanao Hirayama and others. 

https://artistsbooksandmultiples.tumblr.com

Dean Baldwin | Eel’s Wallet

Dean Baldwin
Eel’s Wallet
Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2014
16 x 11 x 3.5 cm (closed) 16 x 21.5 x 2 cm (open)
Edition of 47 signed and numbered copies

A continuation of the artist's many alcohol-themed projects (including bars for Nuit Blanche, the Venice Bienalle, etc., etc.) this eel-skin wallet contains virtually every possible event drink ticket currently in use. Buy one, and wherever you are the drinks are always on the house.


"Named after Dick Higgins' Fluxus-heavy press of the ’60s and ’70s, Something Else Press, this young publisher seemed the only ones present to have produced an entire new line of works especially for the Fair. My favourite? “Eel’s Wallet” by Dean Baldwin, an edition of 47 wallets stuffed full of drinks tickets, which bizarrely becomes some sort of “book” for which we have no name."

- AA Bronson, Time Out Magazine "Five Picks from the London Art Book Fair"

Available from the Nothing Else Press at Edition Toronto this weekend. 

DIY opens this Saturday

In 2010, MKG127 began a series of artist-curated summer shows with A-B by Micah Lexier. Group exhibitions by Hugh Scott-Douglas, Germaine Koh and Dean Baldwin followed. This Saturday a show that I organized opens from 2 to 5 pm.

DIY collects the work of nine artists and two collectives whose work refers to, or employs the spirit of "do-it-yourself”. The exhibition includes both new and existing works by Dean Baldwin (Montreal), Bill Burns (Toronto), Instant Coffee (Vancouver), Liam Crockard (Toronto), Michael Dumontier (Winnipeg) , Daniel Eatock (London, UK), Juliane Foronda (Toronto), Kristiina Lahde (Toronto), Roula Partheniou (Toronto), Joe Scanlan (New York City) and VSVSVS (Toronto).



"In Britain, the term DIY is synonymous with home repair. Elsewhere it carries more go-it-alone connotations. The term is over a hundred years old, came into common usage in the 1950s, and defined a subculture twenty years later. Today it’s ubiquitous as both an ethos and a marketing brand, from Ikea to Etsy to Martha Stewart-style Pinterest pages. DIY features fetishized tools of the trade, as well as examples of do-it-yourself projects: from makeshift speakers and skateparks to some-assembly-required coffee, prisons and funerals."

- press release

The exhibition continues until August 20, at MKG127, which is located in Toronto at 1445 Dundas St. West between Dufferin St. and Gladstone Ave. on the south side. Hours are Wednesday to Saturday from 12 to 6 PM or by appointment. For more information call 647-435-7682

(image: Joe Scanlan)

Dean Baldwin | Eel's Wallet

The first half-dozen of Dean Baldwin's Eel's Wallet (see below post) shipped today. Above are some production shots, featuring the numerous tickets sourced from Ebay, Craigslist, and dollar stores.

The work is available from the Nothing Else Press, here. Other titles launching imminently: Jimmy Limit's Rainbows, Karen Azoulay's A/V reading of her Down With Liberty book and two book bags by Cary Leibowitz.

AA Bronson's Top Five of the London Art Book Fair

AA Bronson, who founded and directed both the New York and LA Art Book Fairs (as well as founding Art Metropole and serving as director for Printed Matter for a number of years) was invited by the London Art Book Fair to share his experiences with book fairs and publishing. In addition to the talk about his life and work with General Idea, he presented a video about his banned erotic novel Lena (more about novels by artists later this week).

While in London, Time Out Magazine asked him for his top five choices from the fair, and Nothing Else Press was his fifth:

5. Nothing Else Press, Toronto
‘Named after Dick Higgins Fluxus-heavy press of the ’60s and ’70s, Something Else Press, this young publisher seemed the only ones present to have produced an entire new line of works especially for the Fair. My favourite? “Eel’s Wallet” by Dean Baldwin, an edition of 47 wallets stuffed full of drinks tickets, which bizarrely becomes some sort of “book” for which we have no name. £80.’

Read the full piece at Time Out, here.

Roula Partheniou & Joy Walker | Full Circle

Roula Partheniou & Joy Walker
Full Circle
Toronto, Canada: Canadian Art Foundation, 2014
13.5 x 13.5 cm
Edition of 1000

The Canadian Art Foundation's annual Gala Dinner and Auction is being held tonight at the Kool Haus in Toronto. Artists involved include John Armstrong, Dean Baldwin, BGL (representing Canada in Venice next year), Sarah Cale, Tammi Campbell, Greg Curnoe, Michel de Broin, David Harper, Spring Hurlbut, Eleanor King, Nestor Kruger, Arnaud Maggs, Ken Nicol, Laura Simon, Miles Stemp, Zin Taylor, and many, many others. Tickets for the event are $600, which includes cocktails, dinner, dancing and the live and silent auctions. Click here for information, or about absentee bidding.

Each year an artist is invited to produce the gala 'environment'. Previous artists have included Micah Lexier, An Te Liu, vsvsvs, Karen Azoulay, Jon Sasaki, John Oswald, etc. This year Joy Walker was invited, who proposed a collaboration with Roula Partheniou.

The pair address "colour, light and shape" with an ambient video, gobo light centrepieces and a limited edition artist book that collectively explore "perceptual shifts, pattern, states of flux and everyday objects at play."

The beautiful book comes housed in a foil-stamped card stock envelope and each spread presents a different shape, with a mirrored cover endpaper completing the first and last. Additionally, another simple shape sits in between the pages (poorly illustrated with the fast snapshots above).

Les Rassembleurs

Les Rassembleurs, curated by Dean Baldwin, closes a week from today at MKG127. It is the gallery’s fourth “artist-curated” summer exhibition, following Toolkit by Germaine Koh in 2012, Chopped and Screwed by Hugh Scott-Douglas in 2011 and A - B, by Micah Lexier in 2010.  

The exhibition includes the work of 14 artists on the loose topic of intoxication and indulgence (Dean’s professional area of expertise). Several of the artists (Ken Nicol, Roula Partheniou, Michael Dumontier, Kristan Horton) have appeared on this site (see tags below) many times before. Other artists include Valérie Blass, Karen Kraven, and Roy Meuwissen from Montreal), Dean Drever from Kingston, John Marriott and Margaux Williamson  from Toronto, Radames "Juni" Figeroa (San Juan, Puerto Rico), Poonam Jain (Mumbai) and Sarah Peters (New York). 

I have two works in the show. One is a silkscreen text piece called Red Nose Semiotics, about a 1905 ballad which became a popular trope in early British comedies. Before one could show a character vomiting or urinating in public, the song Nellie Dean was the fastest cue to the character’s inebriation.

The other work is titled The Piano Has Been Drinking, after the Tom Waits song of the same name. Here an altered 45 rpm record plays the song off-axis, continuing the fiction of the lyrics, in which the singer claims to be sober. The audio for the piece can be heard here. 

For more information, visit the gallery site here, or a review by Terrence Dick, here.