Fiona Banner | Full Stop

Fiona Banner

Full Stop

London, UK: Frith Street Gallery, 1997

19 x 5 cm.

Edition of 3 signed copies

Characterized by the artist as “the smallest neon in the world”, this full stop (or period) by Fiona Banner followed the artist’s bookwork, THE NAM [below], in which she recounted the entire plots of five films about the Viet Nam War, to create an “unreadable novel”. 

The neon and lead on plastic mount work comes housed in a wooden box and is accompanied by a signed certificate. 

The potential of the punctuation mark would continue to inspire Banners work in the decades to come (see next post). 

“It is just a little bit of neon glass that I blew. I liked it because it is a breath encapsulated in glass, as a full stop is a breath in some ways. It represented a gap for me in terms of ideas. I wasn’t sure what to do next as an artist. After a while I tried looking at that awkwardness physically, in terms of making something of it, instead of it being an abstract pain. Also there are no neon full stops out there."

- Fiona Banner

2012 Olympic Posters

Every year since 1912, the city hosting the Olympics or Paralympic Games commissioned at least one poster project to celebrate. A hundred years later, London commissioned twelve posters, by some of the most acclaimed British visual artists of the day. These include Fiona Banner (pictured below), Michael Craig-Martin, Martin Creed (below, bottom), Tracey Emin (below), Anthea Hamilton, Howard Hodgkin, Gary Hume, Sarah Morris, Chris Ofili, Bridget Riley, Bob and Roberta Smith (below) and Rachel Whiteread. The Tate Modern held an exhibition of the works to coincide with the 2012 games. 

The Olympic posters: 

Martin Creed "Work No. 1273”

Anthea Hamilton “Divers"

Howard Hodgkin “Swimming"

Chris Ofili "For the Unknown Runner”

Bridget Riley "Rose Rose”

Rachel Whiteread "LOndOn 2O12.”

The Paralympic posters:

Fiona Banner "Superhuman Nude”

Michael Craig-Martin “GO"

Tracey Emin "Birds 2012”

Gary Hume“Capital"

Sarah Morris "Big Ben 2012”

Bob and Roberta Smith "LOVE.”

Martin Creed also created “Work No. 1197: All the Bells in a Country Rung as Loudly as Possible for Three Minutes,” to take place from 8 to 8:03 a.m. on July 27, the first day of the Olympics. The festival’s web site explained that the idea was to encourage the entire nation “to ring thousands of bells at the same time, whether school bells, church bells, town hall bells, bicycle bells or doorbells.

The Central Council of Church Bell Ringers refused to participate n the project, stating "We are not able to work closely with this project as we believe it is misconceived … We think 8am is not the right time for ringing in very many towers … We do not believe ringing for three minutes nor ringing as fast as possible is really suitable for church bell ringers.” 

A smaller group of enthusiasts visited the clock tower known as Big Ben and brought their own bells. Watch the short video, here. 

Fiona Banner | Trance

Fiona Banner

Trance

London, UK: The Vanity Press, 1997

23 x 17 x 8.8 cm.

Edition of 10

In 1997, Fiona Banner published THE NAM - a thousand page book of continuous, undivided text (280,000 words) in which the artist describes six Vietnam War movies simultaneously: Apocalypse Now, Born on the Fourth of July, The Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill, and Platoon. 

A proofreader concluded that the book was unreadable, which Banner responded to by printing posters declaring it as such (see below) and producing this twenty-hour reading of the work. 

Released in a limited edition of ten copies, Trance consists of twenty-two cassette tapes housed in a plastic box with a unique pencil drawing as its cover. Reportedly, the reading was recorded in its entirety, in one sitting. 

An excerpt from Trance appeared on an obscure 1997 compilation CD called Blueprint, which also featured works by David Shrigley, Pierre Bismuth, Joseph Grigely, Amy Vogel and Erik Weeda. 

Note: Some listings cite the length of this work as fourteen hours (not twenty) and as being published by Frith Street Books (not Vanity Press, Banner’s long-running self-publishing project). 

Kay Rosen | Duck in the Muck

Kay Rosen

Duck in the Muck

Gothenburg, Sweden: LL'Editions, 2024

10 pp., 99 x 14.2 cm., accordion fold

Edition of 250

For their Leporello Series, ll’Editions invites a well-curated selection of excellent artists (Jonathan Monk, Micah Lexier, Fiona Banner, Maurizio Nannucci, etc.) to conceive of a work in the accordion fold format. Beyond this format stipulation, artists are given carte blanche to respond any way they wish. 

For the tenth iteration of the series, Kay Rosen revisited a work not seen for over a decade. Duck in the Muck was presented at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver in 2013, as part of Rosen’s first solo exhibition in Canada (see below). The work was conceived in 1989, the year of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. 

On March 24th, 1989, an oil supertanker owned by the Exxon Shipping Company struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef, ten kilometres west of Tatitlek, Alaska, at midnight. The tanker spilled over ten million gallons of crude oil over the next few days.

It was the second largest oil in U.S. waters, and the environmental impact was exacerbated by the remoteness of the site. Prince William Sound is only accessible by helicopter, plane, or boat, making government and industry response efforts difficult. 

Many miles of coastline were affected and species as diverse as sea otters, harlequin ducks, and orcas whales suffered immediate and long-term losses. Some have still not recovered. 

Duck in the Muck (also known as Exxon Axxident) consists of nine distorted variations of the word “quack” reflecting "genetic damage to living species by oil and chemical spills, and as a worldwide disaster, the multiple spellings allude to the cries of voices from populations around the globe.”

Duck in the Muck was released earlier this month in a small edition of 250 copies. Get yours for €30, here. 

Fiona Banner | Performance Nude

Fiona Banner 

Performance Nude

London, UK: Other Criteria, 2009

96 pp., 8.3 x 1.1 x 10.4”, hardcover

Edition size unknown

"From 'The Birth of Venus' to art school classrooms across the globe, artists have, over time, employed life models in an attempt to capture the essence of the female nude. One such artist is Fiona Banner. As this book Performance Nude illustrates, Banner uses paint and line to portray her models; however, she renders them not in figurative gestures, but in words. Straying further from traditional methods, she specifically uses 'real' women rather than practiced life models as her subject, choosing to capture the strain and tension created in the room by the presence of a novice. Whatever discomfort is revealed in the relationship is tested further by introducing an audience to the room and filming the scene for up to an hour. The effect is at timespoetic, at others searching and critical. By portraying her nudes in this way, Banner questions the difference between looking and perceiving; the separation between experiencing something, and the language we use to describe it.”

- publisher’s blurb

Kristján Gudmundsson | Punktar

Kristján Gudmundsson

Punktar 

Reykjavik, Iceland/Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Silver Press, 1972

12 pp., 18 x 15 cm., softcover

Edition of 300 signed and numbered copies

At an Instant Coffee event years and years ago, curator Christina Ritchie told a story about a Canadian visiting Iceland for the first time. Upon learning where he was from, the cab driver who picked him up from the airport wanted to discuss the merits of Margaret Atwood. The cabbie then asked him what brought him to Iceland, and he sheepishly replied that he had come because of the writings of Halldor Laxness. 

Despite winning the Nobel Peace prize for literature in 1955, the author was pretty obscure at this point (The New Yorker published a story last year titled The Rediscovery of Halldor Laxness). He had become a socialist in America from "watching the starving unemployed in the parks”, alienating many readers and journalists. 

The tourist thought it unlikely that even his seemingly literate cab driver would be aware of him. “I’ll take you to his house,” the driver said. 

This story struck a chord with me as I had just finished reading his epic novel Independent People. It’s a miserable tale of a sheep farmer and his put-upon wife’s battle for survival, and it’s a difficult read. It’s also brilliant. 

For his self-published 1972 artist book, Kristján Gudmundsson photographed and enlarged punctuation from poems by Laxness - three periods. He considered them “enlarged silences”. 

The work reminds me Fiona Banner’s Full Stop drawings: large lead drawings of round and oval shapes, which were later made three dimensional as public art works and this boxed multiple. 

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. 

Micah Lexier | Leporello Nº 02

Micah Lexier

Leporello Nº 02

Gothenburg, Sweden: ll'Editions, 2021

[10] pp., 99.0 × 14.2 × 2.3 cm., boxed

Edition of 250 numbered copies

Released late last month, this handsomely produced boxed work is the second in ll'Editions' series of accordion fold works, following a project by Heimo Zobernig. The next work in the series is by Fiona Banner. Designed by Lundgren+Lindqvist, the work features die-dut elements, foil embossing, and perforations.  It is numbered via rubber stamp on the verso of the box. 

Leporello Nº 02 is available from the publisher, here, for 25.00 EUR.

"A number of years ago Micah Lexier purchased a small paperback publication about the game of dominoes. The very end of the book consisted of a series of pages that reproduced a complete set of twenty-eight domino tiles. The images were printed on right-hand pages, four to a page, while the left-hand pages were blank. The idea was that you were supposed to cut these images out of the book and glue them to empty matchboxes to create your own do-it-yourself set. That sequence of pages, combined with the quality of their reproductions, was the inspiration for Lexier’s leporello. To that, he added two favourite print techniques – perforations and die-cut holes – to create a set of ten domino tiles. Lexier chose the denomination of each tile and its order in the leporello so that none of the thirty-four die-cut holes line up with each other, allowing each hole to be misread as a printed white domino dot."

- publisher's blurb