Douglas Gordon | I was born with...

Douglas Gordon
I was born with...
Newcastle upon Tyne/Berlin: Locus+/Little And Large Editions, 2013
Various sizes
Edition of 13 (+3 APs) signed and numbered copies

Silver spoons of various sizes bought in flea markets in Berlin with their bowls sharpened “to the equivalent tolerence of a surgeon’s blade”. The spoons are engraved with the title and artist’s name, and signed and numbered on the enclosed certificate, which instructs that it should "accompany it through all sales and changes of ownership.” The edition was launched last year in Venice and sold out quickly.

Little And Large Editions have also produced editions by Ceal Floyer, Jonathan Monk, Dave Allen, John Baldessari, Martin Boyce, David Shrigley and others. Locus+ have published editions by Fiona Banner, Mark Dion, Stefan Gec, and Mark Wallinger.

David Shrigley | Brass Tooth

David Shrigley
Brass Tooth 
London, UK: The Multiple Store, 2014
14 x 8 x 6 cm.
Edition of 80 signed and numbered copies

A solid brass molar in a wooden box.

"Brass Tooth is one of the heaviest small artworks that I have made. I imagine it will appeal to dentists and other people who are interested in teeth. It could also be used for cracking nuts with."

- David Shrigley

Listed here as being published in 2009, 2010 and 2014. 

Hans Eijkelboom | Portraits & Cameras

Hans Eijkelboom
Portraits & Cameras
Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Self Published, 2009
64 pp., 21 x 13.8 cm., softcover
Edition of 1000

Martin Parr, who selected this title as one of the more important photo books of the decade, wrote the following about the artist: "Anthropologists often make use of photography in their research, especially when gathering information about a society's strange and fascinating habits. If I were an anthropologist, the first photographer I would call upon is Eijkelboom.” Another book artist who employs serial photography, Erik Kessels calls Eijkelboom "one of the most remarkable people I have come to know during the last few years."

Eijkelboom's first exhibited work in 1971, when he was only 21 years old, in the landmark SONSBEEK 71 exhibition. He was the youngest artist in a show that included Vito Acconci, Stanley Brouwn, Tony Conrad, Hollis Frampton, Dan Graham, Donald Judd, On Kawara, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Ed Ruscha, Fred Sandback, Richard Serra, Paul Sharits, Michael Snow, Joyce Wieland, Lawrence Weiner, and many others.

The Amsterdam-based artist has produced over thirty artist's books, many of them self-published. One of the best, and hardest to acquire (it's available for $1500.00 US, here) is In de Krant, or Being in the Newspaper. For ten consecutive days Eijkelboom succeeded in having his picture appear in the same newspaper. He tracked a press photographer and snuck into the frame whenever possible, in photographs ranging from hard news such as accidents and demonstrations, to promotional pieces like store openings. It's a durational performance documented unwittingly by the press.

For With My Family, in 1973, Eijkelboom rang random doorbells during the day when husbands and fathers were likely to be out at work. He convinced the women answering the door to let him in and pose for a family portrait, with him in the place of the missing father, often with a toddler bouncing happily on his knee.

A more recent project, 10 Euro Outfits, consists of self-portraits while travelling. For each, Eijkelboom photographs himself wearing outfits he bought locally, never spending more than ten euros.

In Portraits & Cameras photography itself (the camera, representation, etc.) becomes the subject matter. The artist was sixty years old at the time, and the sixty pages of the book reproduce an image of the artist at every year of his life. These cropped portraits are coupled with a a magazine ad featuring a camera introduced in that same year. The artist ages as the technology advances. Like most of his work, the book is smart, compelling and humorous.

It's available here for £85.00.

Janek Schaefer | National Portrait

Janek Schaefer
National Portrait
Red Hill, Australia: Room40, 2011
16.5 x 4.5 x 2 cm.
Edition of 7 signed and numbered copies

The London-based artist and composer Janek Schaker has released over twenty five recordings in twenty years, including Skate, a record produced by "cutting a concentric collage of individual short 'sound scars' onto the disc", and the brilliant Recorded Delivery (see previous post, here).

National Portrait, a twenty-four hour long album released on a USB circuit board, is based on an installation work (below) that recorded the sound of the very last day of the five analogue terrestrial TV channels in Liverpool, as they were broadcast live across the city on the 1st of December, 2009. This work condenses the 120 hours (5 channels for 24 hours) into a single day, with the tracks cut up into 1000 random length clips that are to be played back in shuffle mode, producing a varied series of sound bites. A portrait of the city, and country, emerges, as well as a document of the moment in television history when analogue fully gives way to digital.

The screen-printed remote, housing a USB board in the battery compartment, apparently came wrapped in a TV listings page, something I failed to note when my parcel arrived a couple of years ago. I discarded them with the rest of the packaging materials. 

Jack Coke's Farmer's Co-Op | Find the End:

Jack Coke's Farmer's Co-Op
Find the End: A Fluxgame
New York City, USA: ReFlux, circa 1991
12 X 9 cm.
Edition size unknown


In early 1967 George Maciunas received a parcel containing ideas for new works, which he initially attributed to Paul Sharits. The artist wrote Maciunas in the Spring to clarify: “your newsletter really freaked me out (I thought ‘wow, did i send all that stuff to george? i can’t even remember making any of it’)”. He then explains that the proposed works came from the students of Jack Coke, who taught alongside Sharits at the St. Cloud State College. Coke had been impressed with the early Flux Boxes and had assigned that his students should make their own. Sharits continued, “so, credit for that should go to the 'st. cloud state college farmer’s cooperative' (most of the kids up here are from farms and thought it would be nice to label themselves as such…weird kids, eh?!”

There is zero information online about Coke’s time at St Cloud (the above comes from Jon Hendricks’ comprehensive Fluxus Codex) but several Fluxus works were advertised by the collective, and at least two produced - Find the End and Human Flux Trap.

The box label is designed by Maciunas and includes a series of strings  knavishly knotted together. This Reflux reissue was released in the early nineties. The Fluxus version was advertised (for $3) in 1967.

Available from Printed Matter, here, for $45.00 US.

Dan Graham | Video - Architecture - Television

Dan Graham
Video - Architecture - Television 
Halifax, Canada: The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1979
89 pp., 22 x 28 cm., hardcover
Edition size unknown


Dan Graham’s affiliation with the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax dates back to 1969, when he produced two of his earliest film and video performance works (From Sunset to Sunrise and Two Correlated Positions) using the college’s video equipment. He made several trips as a visiting artist and his second solo exhibition was held at the school's Anna Leonowens Gallery in 1970.

"He was a fixture, almost, at NSCAD", noted Garry Neill Kennedy, who was appointed President of the college in 1967 and immediately began transforming the school into an international centre for artistic activity. He instituted an aggressive and well-funded visiting artist program, inviting such artists as Vito Acconci, Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Beuys and Claes Oldenburg to speak and to interact with the students. Professional quality facilities, such as the lithography workshop and new multi-media equipment, made visiting the remote small town attractive to artists. Graham advised that an active publishing press could continue these mutually beneficial relationships.

"Dan Graham was a kind of intellectual ambassador, identifying with this weird place in Halifax. Many people didn't even know where Halifax was. It was more about identifying with a place that makes things happen," says Kasper Koenig, who was hired as editor of the press, at Graham's urging. Along with his brother, bookseller Walther Koenig, Kasper had previously published books with artists such as Stanley Brouwn, Gilbert & George, Franz Erhard Walther, Robert Filliou and Jan Dibbets. At a young age he had curated exhibitions at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm by Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol. The accompanying catalogue for the latter show was an integral component of the exhibition and is now regarded as a classic artists’ publication (with prices ranging from several hundred dollars for later printings and several thousand for signed copies).

Koenig was made an associate professor and offered the role of editor/director of the press. He accepted, he says, because the school was "open and without fear". Between the years 1972 and 1976 the press published nine books with Koenig, under the banner name of "Source Materials for the Contemporary Arts". Five were by visual artists, two by dancers (Yvonne Rainer and Simone Forti), and one by composer Steve Reich (artist and composer La Monte Young was also invited to produce a title, but his proposed project was deemed too costly). The books by artists are all now considered classics: Raw Notes by Claes Oldenburg, Framing and Being Framed by Hans Haacke, two volumes by Donald Judd (one of his writings, another his drawings) and Michael Snow's Cover to Cover. The latter is often cited as the quintessential artist book.

Financial troubles in '76 led to the resignation of Koenig and a two year period of inactivity. In 1978 Benjamin Buchloh from Dusseldorf, then best known as the editor of the influential Interfunktionen magazine, was brought in as editor of the press and part-time faculty member in art history. In addition to finishing up two books initiated before his arrival, he published five titles with the press, including Graham's Video – Architecture – Television. 

Subtitled Writings on Video and Video Works 1970-1978, the book documents the artist's use of video equipment as a functional tool in sculptural installations, environmental concepts and performative activities. Each work is illustrated with either drawing, photograph, or both, as well as a brief description. The title features contributions by Michael Asher and Dara Birnbaum - both artists Graham had suggested be brought to NSCAD to speak - as well as Graham's own Essay on Video, Architecture and Television, in which he discusses video as a medium distinct from film. 

"Film," he writes, "is a reflection of a reality external to the spectator's body; the spectator's body is out of the frame." Conversely, he calls video a "present-time medium" and argues that "In a live-video-situation, the spectator may be included within the frame at one moment, or be out of the frame at another". The text also examines the difference between private and corporate video production, and argues in favour of the integration of the former into public cable TV stations' programming schedules. 

The book, an important document in Graham's examination of the video medium, has long been out of print and has been selling for upwards of $350. Last year the title was made available again by Lars M ller Publishers, as a paperback reprint, with a new introduction by Eric de Bruyn. It is available from them, here, for €40.00.

A recent conversation between Koenig and Kennedy can be viewed on Youtube, here. They speak about the origins of the press, moose, Snow's Cover to Cover, and the recent book on Kennedy and NSCAD published by the MIT Press, The Last Art College (which Koenig calls an arrogant title and quickly changes the subject).

Documents of Artist-Run Centres, 1980- 81

ANNPAC
Documents of Artist-Run Centres, 1980- 81 
Toronto, Canada: ANNPAC, 1981
[unpaginated], 13 x 13 cm., softcover
Edition size unknown

Edited by Victor Coleman, for ANNPAC (Association of National Non-Profit Artists Centres - who, at the time consisted of Allan Mattes, Glen Lewis and Peggy Gale), this publication provides a few pages for each Artist Run Centre in Canada, to list their programming for the year, present installation shots or other documentation. The galleries include YYZ, Western Front, Saw, Optica, Forest City, Eye Level, Centre for Art Tapes, Articule, and many others. The cover features an image of David Buchan from his Modern Fashions exhibition at Mercer Union.

Available from Jim Anderson Books in Winnipeg for $45.00, here.