Artists' Books

Bad Advisors compiles recent texts with pictures of flowers from the street and public gardens taken in Paris during spring 2017. Mourning is an empty box with an excessive syntax. A rose does not allude to anything except its own existence. But you feel, brushing within its range, a bit more complete, which means the sensation is an apparition from nothing. The rose is an empty box with an excessive syntax. English Landscapes contains a series of white-on-black i-phone touch drawings of hay bales; a circular form that replicates across UK agricultural zones in late summer. The books are a pair.

This book is part of the www.anywhereoutofthebook.com series

This first publication brings together texts, documentation, scripts and reference material relating to the body of work Jones started in 2013. Marking a new cycle in his work the book makes a claim about the status of performance in the context of his wider practice and the function of documentation and image regimes in our current times.

The book is claimed to be a form of ‘paraperformance’, meaning a collection of materials that have circulated alongside or chosen to represent the live moments created in his work over a five year period. It represents seven distinct works of installation, sculpture, and performance by Jones including a new work that is made specifically for the pages of this book.

This collection of materials touches on diverse sources and references including the Radical Faerie movement, the Spanish magazine ‘Party’, Liberace’s libel trials, images of uncontacted Amazonian tribes, the political writing of Jean Genet and an early performance work of Vito Acconci to name but a few.

The thread amongst all of the works included in this book is the subtle interweaving of discourses around theatre, performance, the law, representation and politics and the oscillation between urban space, the public sphere and a queer wilderness. More widely the book uses the specificities within Jones’ research to consider the role that performance could play within the art field and, by extension, how documentation and representation of our everyday lives impacts on how we understand our world at large.

This book is part of the series www.anywhereoutofthebook.com series

Concurrently: ode, elegy, satyre, Boeing Nº 737-800 in F♯m awakes and takes off, lands and falls asleep, in between cold sweats and time zones. Triangulating the distance from ground to body, moving though still, to sun, blinding though eyeless, amidst a text searching for sense in an economy of simulations, value suspended 38000 feet above the ground. 

The anatomy of the world’s most popular commercial airplane serves as test tube to rehearse, under the common denominator of a possible fall, a motley set of anxieties, crossing borders, with and without passport. Mirror-play, annotated between the internal voice of a passenger, by the window, their dialogue with the Sun and a chorus of various interjections, from cockpit to exhaust pipe.

“May we want to reckon the time of the position ‘student’ not from the progressive aspect of amateur towards pro. Besides the fact that every step of life is an ongoing learning, there’s a clear physical(virtual) circumstance of school and an educational boundary for student, which makes student’s moment independent from any other vocations. Extra time of working on one subject with mistakenly expended deadlines, being experimental and anti-aesthetic by testing its performance, the growth on having own tone of (visual) voice while mumbling and simultaneously thinking the mumbling can be also a kind of voice. There are untamed beauties in this position.”

The inaugural issue of Rush Print focuses on the topic ‘BAD TYPE.’ A loose synonym of bad here is amatuer or ugly which is what contributors deliver as a student. The content ranges from interviews, workshops and anecdotes with 2020 participants of Grafisch Arnhem. The entire publication is typeset in student-made typefaces so the book also functions as a type specimen.

Rush Print is new magazine annually releasing out from the contributors of Grafisch Arnhem. Throughout spreads, it contains graphic design related subjects such as Types, Time, Talks, etc.

the monumental misrememberings is a meditation on death. It’s a curious insight on the creative and violent ways in which Black girls, women, trans women and femmes often become displaced, experience death, and subjugation as a result of patriarchal systems in America. This debut collection of poems by Mimi Tempestt operates through this specific lens, not to romanticize the pain of Black femme bodies, but to bring light to this sadistic truth. When we turn on the television, when we log into social media, when we look in the mirror, the normalcy of how often and creatively Black women are murdered weighs on our conscience. the monumental misrememberings addresses our unwillingness to grapple with these violences, and places front and center the realities faced by Black femmes.

Size: 5" x 7.5", 88 pages

Self published by Co—Conspirator Press with the support of Women's Center for Creative Work. Designed by MJ Balvanera, Riso-printed by Neko Natalia.

An interactive guide for black women of all ages, to not only create the creative life they want, but to monetize every aspect of it. Visit creativeblackwomansplaybook.com for a Spanish version of the book.

Size: 5" x 7.5", 60 pages

Self published by Co—Conspirator Press with the support of Women's Center for Creative Work. Designed by MJ Balvanera, Edited by Sarah Williams and Hana Ward, Riso-printed by Neko Natalia, Illustrations by Hana Ward.

Two clock-faces are staring at each other.
They are two sides of one thing, as different as they are the same.
They move as two bodies revolving around each other, into a tender embrace.
A kiss, made of time, in time.
Mirrored shape shifters, their hour-numbers climbing on each other's shoulders.
Running up against the limits of their own usefulness, clocklikeness.

A book by Katja Mater, with a text by Amelia Groom designed by Elisabeth Klement
79 clocks, 192 pages, open spine, 17 × 21 cm
Printed by Wilco Art Books on Arena White Rough by Fedrigoni 

Special issue of this US magazine dedicated in its entirety to the late Australian artist/compositional linguist/raconteur Chris Mann, who died in 2018. The magazine contains tributes from Mann associates and admirers, including Warren Burt, Amanda Stewart, Pi-0, Ronald Robboy, Linda Kouvaras, Alvin Lucier, Ruark Lewis, Annea Lockwood, as well as Mann’s own writing and an interview with him by Philip Blackburn.

88 pages bound in soft-cover glossy colour cover by Brigid Burke.

Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain collects a decade of work from artist, musician, and author of On Hell, Johanna Hedva. In plays, performances, an encyclopedia, essays, autohagiography, hypnagogic, and hypnapompic poems—in texts whose bodies drift and delight in form—Minerva tunnels into mysticism, madness, motherhood, and magic. Minerva gets dirty with the mess of gender and genius. She does the labor of sleep and dreams. She odysseys through Los Angeles, shapeshifting in stygian night and waking up to wail in the light.

Toutes les filles rêvent d’un prisonnier est un fanzine issu d’une correspondance avec un ami incarcéré dans une prison française. Un petit ouvrage de 16 pages qui donne à voir une réalité de la prison depuis l’intérieur. Entre potes, gâteaux et barreaux.

J’ai quitté Paris juxtapose des écritures de natures différentes, les unes imageant les autres, parfois lune, regard, tête en l’air, parfois paysage défilant, envolée filante. L’ouvrage s’articule autour de trois textes. Des extraits des Indes Galantes de Jean-Philippe Rameau (1735) ouvrent chaque cahier de texte. Des poèmes de Julien Creuzet composent le corps de texte principal. Ce dernier est accompagné de notes, montages de descriptions paysagères extraites de la collection Toutes nos colonies (1931). Ces extraits ont tous été placés à leur pagination initiale, forçant la rencontre des géographies décrites dans ces ouvrages. Ces ensembles de texte sont séparés par des cahiers d’images, où les photographies de Julien Creuzet se superposent à des détails de l’iconographie de Toutes nos colonies.

J’ai quitté Paris a été conçu lors de l’année de résidence de Julien Creuzet au centre d’art La Galerie à Noisy-le-Sec en 2014. Résidence pensée comme un opéra, qu’il appellera Opéra-Archipel.

Publié avec le soutien de La Galerie, Noisy le Sec, du FRAC Normandie Caen et de la Galerie Dohyang Lee, Paris, France

À lire :
Amadou Elimane Kane à propos de J'ai quitté Paris

Défense d’Afficher est un recueil de graffitis politiques relevés en France tout au long de l’année l’année 2019, une période riche en contestations sociales. Une sélection restreinte, à fortiori non exhaustive, mais recouvrant un large panorama des luttes contemporaines qui nous concernent : contre le capitalisme, contre le racisme, contre le pillage du tiers-monde et pour l'accueil des réfugiés, contre le sexisme et les violences faites aux femmes, contre la destruction de la planète, contre cette société néo-libérale, contre la police et ses violences, contre les inégalités sociales, pour l’auto-défense et l’auto-organisation.

Sans oublier d’y faire apparaitre des sujets plus légers ou drôles. Le corps de l’ouvrage qui recueille les graffitis est imprimé sur six affiches jaunes fluo 50 × 70 cm pliées encartées, soutenu par une couverture muette au motif abstrait de peinture à la bombe. L’ensemble est recouvert d’une jaquette imprimée sur des affiches dos bleu accueillant le titre Défense d’Afficher, lui aussi relevé dans l’espace public. Ce fanzine à été produit suite à l’invitation « Impressions libres » d’Étapes et Exaprint.

Ce fanzine étant vendu à prix libre, il n’est pas possible de l’acheter en ligne. N’hésitez pas à nous contacter pour les modalitées de vente.

FAQ is an accordion-fold art publication edited by Maurizio Cattelan and Myriam Ben Salah and commissioned by Le Dictateur. Coinciding with the 10th anniversary edition of Le Dictateur, the first volume will expand into a yearly series.

FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions, referencing an attempt to synthesize a recurrent flow, a tenor, an ideal visual representation of a given and very subjective “now”. 
Born out of an accute image eating disorder, FAQ reflects the mental assimilation of a relentless roving within physical and virtual art spaces: from galleries to tumblr accounts, museums, or artists studios; it can be seen as a portable exhibition, a show on paper, a project of restitution, a hybrid object that you can leaf and scroll through. Far from being a rational enterprise because of its lack of rules, hierarchy, order—or concept for that matter—it is expressly and brazenly as personal and biased as possible and reflects the obsessive mannerism of its authors.

Works by Korakrit Arunanondchai, Thomas Bayrle, Neil Beloufa, Judith Bernstein, David Douard, Carroll Dunham, Dan Finsel, Llyn Foulkes, Kathy Grannan, Camille Henrot, Charles Irvin, Elad Lassry, Jon Rafman, Steven Shaerer, Emily Mae Smith, Peter Sutherland, Slavs and Tatars, Andra Ursuta, Aleksandra Waliszewska, Charlie White, Jakub Julian Ziolkowski...

In 2019, the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania presented the experimental exhibition Colored People Time. Divided into three chapters—Mundane Futures, Quotidian Pasts, Banal Presents—it used the Black vernacular phrase Colored People's Time (CPT) to explore the ways that dominant notions of time have been used to control and condemn Black people. CPT names a political performance by Black people to evade and ridicule the enforcement of punctuality and productivity.

Alongside reproductions of historical objects from the Black Panther Party, Sutton E. Griggs, the National Institutes of Health/Getty Images, and the African Collection at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Colored People Time includes reprints of seminal essays, newly commissioned writing and poetry from Huey Copeland, Eve Ewing, Michael Hanchard, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Amber Rose Johnson, Carolyn Lazard, Jessica Lynne, Tausif Noor, Meg Onli, Gregory Pardlo, M. NourbeSe Philip, Monique Scott, Martine Syms and Michelle M. Wright. Artists include: Aria Dean, Kevin Jerome Everson, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Carolyn Lazard, Dave McKenzie, Cameron Rowland, Sable Elyse Smith and Martine Syms.

Over the past 40 years, Canadian artist Moyra Davey (born 1958) has perfected a unique synthesis of photography, film and text to critically engage with the past, present and future of the world around her. Based on Davey's eponymous 2019 film, I Confess unites three main sources in a chronicle of late 20th-century Quebec, shaped by themes of race, poverty, language and nationalism. Using American writer James Baldwin's 1962 novel Another Country as its point of departure, Davey's film also focuses on the life and work of Québécois revolutionary Pierre Vallières and Ottawa-based political philosopher Dalie Giroux.

Published to accompany the exhibition Moyra Davey: The Faithful at the National Gallery of Canada, this deeply personal and highly political book seeks to examine an unresolved chapter of Québécois history from a uniquely interdisciplinary perspective that draws attention to contemporary issues of separatism, while reflecting the artist's understanding of photography and text as unique corollaries. This publication features writings by the artist, Dalie Giroux and National Gallery of Canada's Associate Curator Andrea Kunard, and a poster insert.

Published September 2020. 

Drink Deeply and Dream by Elspeth Walker is an ethereal, offbeat short story about wannabe vampires with a Marxist bent and their search for salvation from capitalism via eternal bloodlust.

Paperback, Staple Bound and Offset Printed

Facsimile of the seminal magazine created by Ulises Carrión and Cres, originally published in 1978. In this photographic book—one of very few of Carrion's entire practice—the author is very critical about his own affiliation with the mail art movement. The book presents a series a photographs of his calling card filing box, which the author juxtaposes with witty and poignant captions.

“This book of mine is partly real facts and partly fantasy. The real fact is that I love lists of names, card indexes, information retrieval systems, that sort of thing. No wonder I have an archive at home, the Other Books and So Archive, which includes a collection of artist's books.”

Ulises Carrión (1941-1989) is one of the most important figures of Mexican conceptual art. His 1975 manifesto The New Art of Making Books help defined artist's books as an autonomous artistic genre. His work includes numerous artist's books—which was then designated as bookworks—but also video art, sound arts, performance and mail art.

Monograph bringing together some fifty works by Judy Chicago and unpublished documents, accompanied by three critical texts by Géraldine Gourbe.

Judy Chicago says she wants to live as long as possible; not to transcend her mortal condition, but to be  around as her works successively find recognition. A woman holding out against all odds: such is the image of an artist more a visionary than the pioneer she has so often been described as. Unlike the pioneers, Chicago has never joined the “greats” of the white, modernist, Eurocentric canon. Rather she has avoided this historical snare, urging instead the alternatives of to sustain the vision.

Géraldine Gourbe is a philosopher, author, art critic, and curator.

Published May 2020

Taking inspiration from the history and identity of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Cornwall, this series of books seeks dialogue with the culture and folklore of magical practice. A range of artists were asked to create new work and collaborate on four publications that take their shape through this fascinating alternative history.

‘Empty Aphrodite’ is a radical imagining of the gods of antiquity as archetypal powers and forces that people often encounter in their lives. Organised as an alphabetic poetic sourcebook, it combines magic and inspiration in a series of surrealist portraits. The encyclopaedia comes with five random stickers with which you can choose your fate.

This book appears in conjunction with Cecilia Vicuña’s retrospective exhibition at Witte de With in Rotterdam. The comprehensive show highlights the wide-ranging oeuvre of this self-taught Chilean artist, poet, and filmmaker whose work in the 1970s seemed incomprehensible in an environment dominated by performances and urban interventions that drew from a Western perspective of the avant-garde.

The perception that her painting is amateur, intuitive, or non-professional is closely aligned with the kind of creative act that interests her. Vicuña’s cyclical understanding of this very act is conveyed through the return of ideas that do not exist as “final objects” but rather as rehearsals.

The first comprehensive monograph on the work of Krõõt Juurak

In the past fifteen years, Krõõt Juurak has developed a series of practices and performances that do not necessarily take place in a theatre or a gallery, at a predictable time or space, but rather come to existence as performative conditions through certain other triggers. This volume is both a record and a performative expansion of Juurak’s practice. Through four themed chapters (Animal, Family, Bad Mood Audience and Sleeping Bad Mood), the publication features a rich array of text-based works, essays, interviews, documentation and ephemera that will provide an insight into Juurak’s singular body of work including Internal Conflict, Sleeping Performance, Autodomestication, Performances for Pets and Bad Mood.

Edited by Galerie / Adriano Wilfert Jensen and Simon Asencio

Text contributions by Krõõt Juurak, Alex Bailey, Kate Strain, Noor Mertens, Suzan D. Polat, Jessica Ullrich, Guendalina Pirelli, Donny Mahonney, Simon Asencio and Adriano Wilfert Jensen.

Published October 2020

Schismatics consists of 10 short stories, in a fictitious way dealing with forgotten historical personas. Among them, artist Goda Palekaitė includes Mary Anning –– an amateur discoverer of dinosaurs, Emanuel Swedenborg –– a mystic who empirically explored the architecture of heaven, and Essad Bey –– a Jewish-Muslim writer and orientalist. Here their lives are revived and balance between the lines of history and story.

The book fuses elements of fiction, academic writing, and artistic research, and intertwines with rumors, forgeries, and inventions. Previously, its characters and narratives have already appeared in Palekaitė’s performances and installations, which are presented in the middle of this bilingual edition. In the introductory essay, Valerio Del Baglivo analyses the author’s exploration of facts and fiction, the mechanisms of knowledge production, and the trans-chronological perception of time. At the end of the book, Monika Lipšic ‘Riddle’ reflects on a ‘schismatic poetics’. 

Goda Palekaitė is a contemporary artist and researcher whose work combines visual, literary, performative, and anthropological practices. Exploring the politics of historical narratives, the agency of dreams and collective imagination, and social conditions of creativity, her work evolves around long-term projects that manifest as performances, scenographies, installations, and texts. Her performances, solo and group shows are being presented internationally. In 2019 Goda Palekaitė received The Golden Stage Cross and the Young Artist’s Prize for her artistic contributions across disciplines.

Published September 2020

Wisrah Villefort’s overarching research focuses on the nonhuman, digital matter, synthetic polymers, prosthetics and their markets.

The ongoing hypermedia work Mercado Livre begun in 2017, is dependent on the viewer performing online, accessing the platform via Instagram. Villefort collects images from online marketplaces based in the Global South, outside of the West, including AliExpress (China) and Mercado Livre (Argentina) for the content. Mercado Livre, besides being the title of the work and the platform, is also the term for the neoliberal principle of the “free market”, in which goods’ prices supposedly regulate themselves.

This book accompanies his exhibition, THE MOUTH OF THE GIFTED HORSE, dissecting Mercado Livre through the eyes of the show, focussing on inter-species relationships and non-human prosthetics, featuring a text written by Villefort during his recent research residency at Pivô, São Paulo, entitled 'Notes on Masks, Gloves and Muzzles: Beyond the Fault of Epimetheus'.