New Titles

 

New titles: review copies, things we were gifted, and things we bought, including a title from the Halifax Art Book Fair, which took place this weekend. I’ll try to get to all of them in the coming weeks. 

Micah Lexier

Happy Birthday to Micah Lexier, who turns 61 today. 

His exhibition Names of Shapes is currently on view at Birch Contemporary, in Toronto, until December 4th. The show is accompanied by a text I wrote called A Circle Does What A Circle Does Best, alongside writings by David Bellingham and Derek McCormack. 

Swimmers Group

Alex Bierk & Derek McCormack
Peterborough
Toronto: Canada: Swimmers Group, 2017
154 pp.,  7.5 x 9", softcover
Edition of 350 numbered copies


Nicholas Pye, Faye Mullen, & Skye Goodden
Rise and Fall
Toronto: Canada: Swimmers Group, 2015
58 pp., 8.75 x 11.75", softcover
Edition of 350 numbered copies


Tony Jeffries aka Tonetta
Free As A Bird
Toronto: Canada: Swimmers Group, 2014
276 pp.,  7 x 9", softcover
Edition of 60


Founded by Sebastian Frye in 2014, Swimmers Group produces poetry, comics, and artist books by Mark Laliberte, Geoffrey Pugen, Sarah Sands Phillips, Ami Xherro and many others. Visit Swimmers Group at their site, here, or next weekend at the Edition Toronto Art Book Fair.

/edition Toronto: Holiday Arts Mail-Order School

Table 10: Holiday Arts Mail-Order School

The Holiday Arts Mail-Order School will be launching The Jack O’Lantern, a Hallowe’en Arts 1937 Yearbook. The yearbooks are free to graduates of the program (those who cannot attend will have their copy and diploma mailed to them) with a limited number of copies available for purchase by non-grads. There will also be a a selection of H.A.M.S. souvenirs: bone china glow-in-the-dark Jack-O'Lantern clocks, H.A.M.S. Ouija boards, pennants, and more.


"In 2008, Ian Phillips and I co-founded H.A.M.S., the Holiday Arts Mail-Order School of Peterborough, Ontario. The school taught a single course: Hallowe'en. Students received lesson books with subjects such as "The Jack-o'-lantern," "The Jack-o'-lantern as Costume," "The Jack-o'-Lantern as Decoration." Students then sent us Hallowe'en projects – masks and trick-or-treat bags and spooky paintings and such. I'm pleased to say that the H.A.M.S. Yearbook for 1937 has been published (at H.A.M.S., it's still 1937; it will always be 1937). It contains all the lessons, as well as work by Shary Boyle, Scott Treleaven, Paul P, Liz Sullivan, Katie Bethune-Leamen, Vincent Fecteau, Micah Lexier, Suzanne Carte, Sandra Rechico, RM Vaughan, Tara Lees Azzopardi, Susan Kernohan, Ken Sparling, Derek Sullivan, Colter Jacobsen, Ereck Jarvis, Julie Voyce, and many, many more. It also documents the H.A.M.S. installation at FLY Gallery, and the haunted house that H.A.M.S. built at Art Toronto five years ago.

Graduates of the school will receive a complimentary yearbook; others are welcome to buy a copy at the upcoming Edition/Artists' Book Fair in Toronto. There will be other things to buy: gags, pennants, limited-edition Ouija boards. There will also be bone china clocks that glow in the dark, created for H.A.M.S. by the great Alexx Boisjoli. Happy Hallowe'en!"

—Derek McCormack

Derek McCormack book launch tomorrow

Read Chris Randle's interview with McComarck at hazlitt, here. 

Derek McCormack | Grab Bag

Derek McCormack
Grab Bag
New York City, USA: Akashic Books, 2004
200 pp., 5 x 8", softcover
Edition size unknown

Edited by Dennis Cooper, Grab Bag is comprised of two interrelated novels, Dark Rides and Wish Book, both are set in the same small rural city, in different eras. The cover features an illustration by Ian Phillips (Pas de Chance), which recognizes McCormack's ongoing obsession with Halloween.

The title was chosen as one of the Village Voice's Best Books of the Year in 2004, and has received considerable praise elsewhere:

"Anyone interested in the more wicked, crafty forms of Canadian writing would be well advised to spend time with McCormack."

- Toronto Star

"Boy, can Dennis Cooper find ’em! Grab Bag will grab you, all right; plain, simple, and hard."

- John Waters

"Grab Bag culls the best of the perverse and innocent world of Derek McCormack. The mystery of objects, the lyricism of neglected lives, the menace and nostalgia of the past – these are all ingredients in this weird and beautiful parallel universe."

– Edmund White

"[A] kaleidoscopic look at a world of cheap furbelows and carnival flash, a place where childlike wonder goes hand in hand with cruel cynicism, and where even the promise of heaven appears as tawdry as an eyeshadow case."

– Ryan Brooks, Chicago Reader

"[A] rare treat ... Weird, inventive, wonderful."

– Jorge Morales, Village Voice

"The first U.S. outing for the sexy, edgy Canadian novelist, steered your way by the gratifyingly dark-souled Dennis Cooper."

– The Advocate

Available from Amazon, here.

Bookclub at the London Art Book Fair

In addition to the Nothing Else Press Booth at the Whitechapel London Art Book Fair, we will also be taking part in a presentation about Bookclub. 

Bookclub consists of a group of Toronto artists, publishers, curators, gallerists and writers who collect artists' publications. The group meets a few times a year to present (mostly informally, but sometimes formally, such as presentations at the Power Plant in 2011 and 2013) artists' books, and occasionally, artists' multiples, records, ephemera, etc. For the past three years we have been commissioning artists to produce book bags: Michael Dumontier in 2012, Kay Rosen in 2013 and a forthcoming project by Claude Closky.

The members of Bookclub include Bill Clarke, myself, Wendy Gomoll, Michael Klein, Micah Lexier, Derek McCormack, Roula Partheniou, Sarah Robayo Sheridan, Derek Sullivan, and Paul Van Kooy. Bill, Roula and I will present on behalf of the group, many of whom are attending the simultaneous Art Book Fair in NYC.

For more information about the group, read the Toronto Standard piece by Jason McBride from a few years ago, here. Details about the event are forthcoming.