Richard Long

Three of six postcards published by the Lisson Gallery on the occasion of their exhibition Richard Long – Circle to Circle, which opened on May 11th and continues until June 23rd. 

Mike Kelley | Platos’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile and The Peristaltic Airwaves

Mike Kelley
Platos’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile and The Peristaltic Airwaves
Compound Annex, 2012
2 CD set, 55:36 and 38:19
Edition size unknown

Originally released on cassette in 1987 by High Performance Magazine, the remastering, texts and artwork on this 2 CD reissue were approved by Mike Kelley prior to his suicide in January 2012.

Disc 1
Recorded live at Artists Space, New York, December 5, 1986
With: Sonic Youth (Thurston Moore, Lee Renaldo, Kim Gordon, Steve Shelley); Molly Cleator; and Adam Rudolf on the didgeridoo.
Assisted by Tony Oursler, Mary Jones, and Jennifer Bolande.
Recorded by Carole Parkinson.

Disc 2
Performed live on KPFK Radio September 30, 1986
With: Jack Skelley and Nic Greene, guitars; Dave Childs, drums; and Nancy Evans, voice and horn.
Co-produced by High Performance magazine and Jacki Apple for Soundings on KPFK Pacifica Radio with assistance from KPFK and the National/State/Country Partnership.
Executive producer of Soundings - Jacki Apple; Sound engineer - John Glass.

Available for £13.95 from Donlon's Books for here.

Laurie Anderson turns 71 today

Taryn Simon | An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar

Taryn Simon
An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar
Gottingen, Germany: Steidl, 2007
152 pp., 26.2 x 34.5 cm., clothbound
Edition size unknown

Taryn Simon documents places and objects that are typically inaccessible or unknown to a public audience. After what one can only imagine is painstaking negotitations, she visits hidden, forbidden, under-the-radar and the generally inaccessible sites and distills them into a single image.

Her large format photographs (printed on the page in very small reproductions, for some reason) capture things most people have never seen: the AIDs virus in a vile, 48 hours worth of items confiscated by customs agents, containers of radioactive nuclear waste, the CIA’s art collection, the Imperial Office of the KKK, the operating theatre during a Palestinian woman's hymenoplasty (the 'restoration' of her virginity), a simulated city in Kentucky used to conduct battlefield training exercises, the cave of a hibernating bear, and over fifty other oddities.


“I am always immensely grateful to people who do impossible things on my behalf and bring back the picture. It means I don’t have to do it, but at least I know what it looks like.”

- Salman Rushdie, forward

Liz Magor | Four Notable Bakers

Liz Magor
Four Notable Bakers
Toronto, Canada: Self-published, 1983
[42] pp., 18 x 23 cm., softcover
Edition Size Unknown

"Magor's artist's book juxtaposes images from professionnal baking manuals, with a variety of images which refer to the body and social practice, including hairstyles, tatoos and the wearing of uniforms."

From the AGO Library and Archives Unshelved event, last Wednesday [see previous posts].

Chloe Dewe Mathews | Shot at Dawn

Chloe Dewe Mathews
Shot at Dawn
Madrid, Spain: Ivorypress, 2014
[unpaginated], hardcover
Edition size unknown

A macabre pun, Shot at Dawn records the sites of the executions of British, French and Belgian soldiers during the first World War. The result of two years research, the book features images of forests, fields, a town hall, a primary school, an abattoir, a cemetary, and other now mostly serene locations where soldiers were executed by firing squad. They were not the victims of enemy combatants, but were killed by their fellow soldiers, as punishment for cowardice or desertion.

Suffering from shell shock, the soldiers felt unable to continue fighting and fled. Senior military commanders believed that if such behaviour was not harshly punished, the discipline and morale of the entire army might collapse. The disgraced soldiers were charged with “fleeing in the face of the enemy”. It is unlikely that they received a fair trial or an adequate defence. Many were minors. The cause of death was rarely shared with the relatives of the deceased.

Dewe Mathews' photographs are seasonally accurate and were taken as close as possible to the precise time of day at which the executions occurred, typically around dawn.


"Initially, I was wary of taking on a project about the first world war as I have no personal connection with it, but, from a documentary photography perspective, I was drawn to the idea of arriving somewhere 100 years afterwards. It's almost the opposite of war photography. So, instead of the photographer bearing witness, it is the landscape that has witnessed the event and I who am having to go into that landscape in the hope of finding anything tangibly connected to the event. It was almost like having to find a new language or way of seeing."

"I had studied the first world war at school and knew about the terrible suffering and slaughter, but I had never heard about the executions and so I was really shocked. It seemed incredible to me that young men who had signed up to fight for their country and who were sent out to the trenches and exposed to this unimaginable horror, should be executed by their own men because something went wrong in their heads or they simply couldn't do it any more. From today's perspective and our understanding of soldiers returning from Iraq or Afghanistan with post-traumatic shock, it just seems brutally unjust."

- Chloe Dewe Mathews, interviewed by Sean O'Hagan, The Guardian

From the Unshelved event at the AGO Library and Archives on Wednesday (see previous posts). 

Joe Fafard | MacLaren Against the Grain Fafard Field Project

Joe Fafard

MacLaren Against the Grain Fafard Field Project

Barrie, Canada: MacLaren Art Centre, 1997

[64] pp,  5 x 12 cm., flipbook

Edition size unknown

A 'drawing' made on over fifty acres of land is documented in a miniature flip book.