Structure No. 1, Spring 1968

John J. Sharkey

Structure No. 1, Spring 1968

London, UK: Structure Publications, 1968

24 pp., 25.5 x 20.5 cm., staple-bound

Edition size unknown

The debut issue of Structure magazine laid out it’s mission as follows: 

"Structure will attempt to explore the concepts of potential environmental structures and their actual realisation in social terms, art of play. It will also explore the structural elements of environments as well as the creative possibilities and aesthetic extensions into dance, theatre, music, poetry, colour and light."

However, the first issue - of what was intended as a quarterly journal - was also its last. 

The twenty-four page magazine featured Dick Higgins' Some Graphis Mirrors (see below), Jeffrey Shaw’s "expanded cinema environment and eventstructure” work Corpocinema, artist/activist Jean Toche's Manifesto 1 for a Theatre of Human Destruction, poetry by editor John J. Sharkey and works by Al Hansen, Theo Botschuiver, Jack Collom, Brendon O'Regan, Ivor Davies, Jackie Cassen, Rudi Stern, John J Lobell, Michael Steiner, Stephen Willats and others. 

The front and back cover feature images by Dutch photographer Pieter Boersma of inflatable works by the Event Structure Research group (ERG). 

The issue is somewhat scarce and typically sells for a few hundred dollars. If securing the rights wasn’t a complete nightmare, someone should publish a compendium of single-issue magazines of the ‘avant-garde’. 

Stephen Willats | Balcony

Stephen Willats

Balcony

London, UK: Imprint93, 1994

staple-bound

Edition size unknown

"Xerox printing with stapled binding. I personally hand made all of the copies! (Probably no more than 125-150 in total.) I made the dust jackets from grease proof paper from the supermarket! (It changes color over time!)"

- Matthew Higgs

Stephen Willats | Cha Cha Cha

Stephen Willats
Cha Cha Cha
London, UK: Coracle Press / Lisson Gallery, 1982
[26] pp., 20.5 x 15 cm., thick paper leaves
Edition size unknown


"The entrance to the Cha Cha Club was under an old railway arch, at the end of a narrow alleyway, underneath Charing Cross Station: The Club for people who don’t need to pose.  You can use the night as cover, as a cloak to be who you want, to be yourself, without anyone hassling you…The Cha Cha Club captured the spirit of this new generation’s attitude perhaps more than any other, where everything was possible if your attitude was right.  As a result of meeting members of the Cha Cha Club while making the work: Are You Good Enough For the Cha Cha Cha, I became aware of the extent of the night world that has recently emerged.  I went on to make most of my work over that three years with people who had been to the club at some point."

- Stephen Willats, Means of Escape, Catalogue Rochdale, 1984

Imprint 93

In 1993, Matthew Higgs founded a small press dedicated to artists' editions, called Imprint 93. The artist/curator published multiples and editions by Billy Childish, Martin Creed, Chris Ofili, Elizabeth Peyton, Peter Doig, Stewart Home, Bob & Roberta Smith, Stephen Willats, Jeremy Deller and many others.

Earlier this week Higgs began uploading images of the various projects to his Instagram feed, here.


"I started a small publishing project in the early 1990s in London. It was a way to collaborate with artists I was interested in, and it allowed me to develop my own identity as a publisher/curator – in that Imprint 93 reflected many of the things that interested me in art at that time. I financed all of the projects myself, and they were mostly printed at night on the photocopier at the office where I worked during the day. The project was inspired by the independent publishing movements of the 60s and 70s. (“It was easy, it was cheap, go and do it!”) However in the early 1990s, and certainly in London, very few people were publishing works in this way, so Imprint 93 stood out, simply because it was fairly unique. Many of the artists who I collaborated with – including Peter Doig, Elizabeth Peyton, Jeremy Deller, Martin Creed, Chris Ofili, etc. – are now much better know, but at the time these were artists at the beginning of their careers, just as I was at the beginning of my own career as a curator. It was a very organic and mutual process."

- Matthew Higgs (interviewed by Stephanie Bailey)

Stephen Willats | Shopping Parade

Stephen Willats
Shopping Parade
Toronto, Canada: Art Metropole: 1997
16 pp., 20 x 12.7 cm., paper
Edition of 1000, 25 signed by the artist

Subtitled Bilton Road – Stills from the Film, Willats' contribution to the Little Cockroach Press series juxtaposes film-stills of a city street with texts describing industrial noise. The issue is available for 
£15.00 from the artists’ site, here.