Garry Neill Kennedy | E

Garry Neill Kennedy

E

Halifax, Canada: self-published, 2012

[unpaginated], 27 x 21.2 cm., softcover

Edition of 12 signed and numbered copies

For his June to July, 1980 exhibition at Eye Level Gallery in Halifax, Garry Kennedy modified the gallery's IBM electric typewriter by removing the bottom of its lower case “e”. Over the course of the show, all the correspondence sent by gallery staff was copied and placed in the exhibition space. 

It’s possible that the choice of the letter ‘e’ is a reference to American poet e.e. cummings, or to French author Georges Perec, who famously wrote the 300-page novel La disparition (1969) using only words that did not contain the letter ‘e’. 

The work predates Kennedy’s later interventions - such as CORRECTIONS (Anna Leonowens Gallery, 2012) and HORIZONS (Vancouver Art Gallery, 1980/2024) - and seemingly straddles Concrete Poetry and Institutional Critique. I’m reminded of the Michael Fernandez rubber stamp “The roll of the artist run centre is to bring down the government”, which went out on every letter from Struts for a month, presumably including their communication with the government agencies that funded them [see below]. 

*Printed Matter lists the date as 2012 and Eye Level Gallery as the publisher. Peter Trepanier’s comprehensive book Garry Neill Kennedy Printed Matter 1971 - 2009 lists the work as self-published, and from 2006. However, Trepanier’s book doesn’t extend to 2012, so I’ll leave the date as 2012. However,  Eye Level makes no reference to the publication on their site so I’m going to assume that it was self-published also. 

 

Garry Neill Kennedy | The Big Five

Garry Neill Kennedy
The Big Five
Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2016
five coasters in a printed sleeve
13 x 13 cm.
Edition of 50 signed, numbered and dated copies

The Nothing Else Press is pleased to announce a new artists' multiple by one of Canada’s most prominent and pioneering contemporary artists.

The country's five largest banks (in terms of assets, deposits and capitalization) are the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto Dominion, the Bank of Montreal and Scotiabank. Together they account for more than 85% of the banking industry in Canada.

Kennedy, whose work has often explored institutional power and the political implications of colour, has reassigned the colour schemes of the bank's corporate logos,  shifting them one down the financial ladder. The CIBC logo appears in RBC colours, the RBC in TD colours, TD in Scotiabank colours, etc., thus disrupting the institutions' corporate identities.

Garry Neill Kennedy is a recipient of the Order of Canada (2003) and the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts (2004). In addition to an extensive international exhibition history, Kennedy was the president of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design for twenty-three years (1967-1990), establishing NSCAD as a forerunner in art education. Recently, MIT Press invited Kennedy to author a book, The Last Art College, NSCAD (1968-1978) which chronicles the first decade of his presidency. In 2012, the National Gallery of Canada published the catalogue raisonné Garry Neill Kennedy: Printed Matter, 1971 –2009. Kennedy is represented in Toronto by Diaz Contemporary. 

The edition will launch this week at the Toronto Art Book Fair. Visit www.nothingelsepress.com to place an order.

Peter Trepanier Xmas Cards

From an ongoing series of Royal themed holiday cards.