Ken Nicol | XXX

Ken Nicol

XXX
Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2012
32 x 6.5 x 6.5

Edition of 30, each unique

Never made available for sale, this multiple served as the Nothing Else Press Christmas card that year, sent to friends and clients. It consists of a 750 ml bottle of red wine, with labels designed and hand-typed by the artist. I now wish we kept more than one for ourselves. 

Jon Sasaki | In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock on the morning

Jon Sasaki

In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock on the morning

Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2014

9 x 7 x 3 cm

Edition of 50 signed and numbered copies.

Two potatoes wired to power a science toy clock broadcast a distressing message.

Packaged in a clear plastic box, the work includes the altered clock (a wired LCD screen, copper and zinc electrodes), extra nails and an instruction sheet. 

“The buyer becomes complicit, Sasaki told Canadian Art Magazine in 2014, "they have to stab these two potatoes with electrodes and watch the system run itself down. It’s tragedy, but really only tragicomedy. If it were a sentient being it would be tragedy. It’s comedy because it’s just a potato. There’s something heartbreaking and funny about empathizing with an inanimate object.”

A new exhibition of Sasaki’s work opens at week today at Clint Roenisch Gallery in Toronto. An opening reception will be held on September 4th from 6 to 8pm. The exhibition - titled Making Do With The Photons That Linger After The Sun Has Set - continues until October 18th. 

Karen Azoulay | Down With Liberty

Karen Azoulay

Down With Liberty

Toronto, Canada: The Nothing Else Press, 2013

218 pp., 18 x 18 x 2 cm., clothbound

Edition of 15 signed and numbered copies

Many, many years ago we were enjoying backyard drinks with Karen Azoulay, and she began recounting her fascination and fear of the Statue of Liberty, which was made all the more interesting given that she had moved from Toronto to New York only a few years prior. She added that she was collecting images of the tower being destroyed in pop culture, almost as immersion therapy. 

The ending of the original Planet of the Apes remains the classic example, but pulp science fiction and comic books images predate that scene, and subsequently it has almost become shorthand in disaster films for the city under siege. 

Down With Liberty is a three-thousand word account of the statue and the artist's fraught relationship with it. Following this are 200 images of the monument meeting its demise in film stills, video game screengrabs, scenes from comics, cartoons, and television series. 

The book is available in a limited edition of 15 signed and numbered copies, each with a unique hand-painted cover and collaged postcard.

The work has also been presented as a narrated slide show at Deitch Projects in New York, Concordia University in Montreal and TPW in Toronto. The slide show was available as a USB stick, but has subsequently sold out. 

Jon Sasaki

Happy Birthday to Jon Sasaki, who turns 51 today. 

Above are four projects we did together, and the invitation to a surprise birthday party we threw for him on Sunday. 

Liz Knox | A Void

Liz Knox

A Void

Sackville, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2024

[28] pp., 21.5 x 14 cm., staple-bound with die-cut cover

Edition of 100

In  her extensive bookwork practice, Liz Knox mines online comments to produce portraits of changing cultural, political and sexual mores. Synopsis  (2013) featured brief, often poetic, descriptions of over fifty films,  sourced entirely from the parental advisory section of the Internet  Movie Database. Commentariat (2017) assembled responses to the  sex advice column Savage Love, portraying the shifting sexual politics  of the era of the Obama administration. The Anarchist Review (2023) collected comments from the Amazon page for the notorious Anarchist Cookbook,  ranging from those condemning the retailer for stocking a dangerous  title, to those disappointed the bomb-making instructions were not more  thorough. 

A Void continues this approach, reprinting Instagram posts regarding Urs Fischer’s controversial 2007 exhibition You,  a quarter-million dollar hole in the ground of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise  gallery. The spirited  debate poses questions that poke at the nature of art, nomenclature,  meaning, and what constitutes value.  

We soft-launched this title at the Halifax Art Book Fair last month but I failed to post it here. It’s a great project - big questions surrounding debated in hasty online outbursts. 

It’s available for $10 CDN, here. 

Halifax Art Book Fair

The Halifax Art Book Fair takes place tomorrow, April 12th. We’ll be there with our Nothing Else Press publications, alongside vendors: 

Folly House

Combos Press

Conundrum Press

Copy Shop Books

Dalhousie Art Gallery

DesiredFX

Emma Allain

Eyelevel Artist Run Centre & Bookstore

Micah Lexier

Municipal Geographic

Seed & Spark Bookstore Co-operative

Special Characters

SpekWork Studio

Struts Gallery / Owens Art Gallery

Susan Mills Artist Books

Tel # Publishing

Visual Arts News

Wonder’neath

The event takes place from 7:30 to 8:30pm, April 13th, at the All Nations Church, 2535 Robie Street, Halifax. For more information, visit: 

https://halifaxartbookfair.ca

Dave Dyment | The Artist Multiple As Unbound Book

 

The inaugural edition of the Halifax Art Book Fair (HABF) and conference will take place on April 13th from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the All Nations Church, 2535 Robie Street in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Admission is free. 

I will be giving at talk at 3:30 pm titled The Artist Multiple as Unbound Book. The PowerPoint presentation will feature a couple hundred images and will trace the origins of Artist Multiple and its relationship to Artists’ Books. 

Multiples Pop-Up Shop

 

In Toronto there’s a tight-knit community of publishers interested in editions. Today, several of us are presenting a pop-up shop at MKG127, from noon to six. Participants include Paul+Wendy Projects, Slow Editions, GuyGuyGuy, Alicia’s Klassic Kool Shoppe, Jimmy Limit & Maggie Groat and our own Nothing Else Press. 

For several years the Toronto Art Fair accommodated publishers of artists’ books and multiples but this stopped during Covid, and hasn’t returned. So this event harkens back to something four of us (along with Bywater Brothers) hosted years ago at G Gallery. 

Whether you’re doing some last minute Christmas shopping (or Christmas shopping), or nearby enough to stop in and say hello, please drop by. There will be things available for every price range, including risographed zines, rubber stamps, t-shirts,  tote-bags, hats, scarves, postcards, prints, pins, clocks, sculpture, stickers, ceramics, cards, etc. etc. 

Hope to see you there. 

Thanks to Masanao Hirayama [Himaa] for the graphics, Michael Klein for the space, Panya Clark Espinal for altering her beautiful exhibition today to accommodate us, Mercer Union for the tables and Micah Lexier for handling most of the organization, despite only participating in an unofficial capacity. 

Shaheer Zazai | FS1-222.8-NEP

Shaheer Zazai

FS1-222.8-NEP

Sackville, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2023

152 x 19 cm. 

Edition of 50

The Nothing Else Press is pleased to announce, FS1-222.8-NEP, a new woven scarf by Shaheer Zazai. The work is an extension of his practice of creating elaborate digital compositions using the character and highlighter functions of Microsoft Word. The resulting graphic images, inspired by traditional Afghan carpet patterns, mimic textile-making methods where every knot of a carpet is translated into a typed character. This relationship between his gridded compositions and weaving processes is translated into a wearable object.

Shaheer Zazai is a multidisciplinary Afghan-Canadian artist based in Cyprus. He is known for digital works that use thousands of individual, manual keystrokes in Microsoft Word to mimic traditional Afghan carpet-making techniques. More recently, he has expanded his practice to include textiles, translating his digital works into jacquard weavings. His practice focuses on exploring and attempting to investigate the development of cultural identity in the present geopolitical climate and diaspora.

Zazai graduated from OCADU in 2011 and was a finalist for EQ Bank’s Emerging Digital Artist Award in 2018. He has exhibited widely across Canada and abroad including recent exhibitions at The Power Plant Contemporary (Toronto); The Textile Museum (Toronto); The Aga Khan Museum (Toronto); Patel Brown (Montreal); Owens Art Gallery (Sackville); Libby Leshgold Gallery & Emily Carr University (Vancouver); FSU Museum of Fine Art (Tallahassee); CAFKA Biennial 2019 (Kitchener), Glenhyrst Art Gallery (Brantford), and the Art Gallery of Mississauga. www.shaheerzazai.com

The work is available from the Nothing Else Press website, alongside projects by David Shrigley, Kelly Mark, Micah Lexier, Jonathan Monk, Vanessa Maltese, Jon Sasaki, Aleksandra Mir, Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber, etc. etc., here: http://www.nothingelsepress.com. 

Follow us at www.instagram.com/nothing_else_press

"In a very broad way, my work is an exploration into the development of cultural identity in the present geopolitical climate and diaspora. 

[...]

I often describe my process as the surrealist drawing technique of Exquisite Corpse drawing mixed with Tetris. I am Tetris-ing shapes together while troubleshooting my limits as I work through the page. I don’t know what the outcomes will be, and this is what drives me to continue testing and experimenting.”

- Shaheer Zazai

Michael Dumontier & Neil Farber | Wound Salt

Michael Dumontier & Neil Farber

Wound Salt

Sackville, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2023

4.5 x 9.5 cm.

Edition of 50 signed + numbered copies

Very pleased to announce a new edition by Michael Dumontier & Neil Farber, an engraved glass salt shaker. It’s available here, for $65.00 CDN. 

Is putting salt on a wound good or bad? The idiom suggests the “rubbing in” of unpleasant circumstances, but in practice can function as a home remedy for speeding up the healing of wounds and cuts. A great gift for both friends and foes.

Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber are founding members of The Royal Art Lodge, and have continued a collaborative practice since the collective disbanded in 2008. Their work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. They were shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award in 2014. Dumontier and Farber’s work is included in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery and Winnipeg Art Gallery as well as Takashi Murakami, Tokyo, Japan; La Maison Rouge, Paris, France; Centro De Arte Caja de Burgos, Burgos, Spain. See more of their work here. 

Wound Salt is the first of four projects we’ll announce this month, leading up to a Multiples Pop-Up Shop in Toronto on the 17th. 

Happy Birthday to Michael Dumontier