Small Publishers Fair London
On October 24 and 25 I’ll be participating in the Small Publishers Fair in London. My new book The End of the World will be the special focus. I’ll bring a small selection of my other books. Do get in touch if you’d like to see a specific title, so I can bring it along.
All details about the fair can be found here, and an overview of participants here. There will be an exhibition connected to the fair and a program of talks.
I hope to see you there!
Opening hours:
Friday 24 and Saturday 25 October from 11 AM to 7 PM.
There is free admission.
Location:
Conway Hall
25 Red Lion Square
London WC1R 4RL
THIS TOO SHALL PASS launch in Gent
I have made a new work for ‘Neighbor’, a fourteen meter wide light sculpture consisting of eight ‘digits’ mounted on 019, a former welding factory turned artist space in Gent, Belgium.
You can read more about the light sculpture and previous artists who contributed to it here.
My work is based on a text I once saw painted in large letters on the side of a building in Asbury Park, New Jersey: THIS TOO SHALL PASS. Later, I read this has its origin in Persian poetry. It is a verse with the status of being true – always, and everywhere. At the same time, it seems like a radically disruptive statement in our everyday lives, where we unthinkingly go on as if we controlled our environment.
THIS TOO SHALL PASS will launch on October 2nd around 8 PM. It will be on view until November 16th, every evening from sundown until 10 PM, on 019’s eastern facade. The address is Dok-Noord 5L in Gent. It can best be seen from across the dock (Schipperskaai). The work is 10.30 minutes long and runs in a continuous loop. With thanks to the curators, Arnout De Cleene and Michiel De Cleene. The photo above is by Michiel De Cleene.
Edit: you can now see a recording here.
Ordering from the US
Negotiations are ongoing with this pigeon.Dear friends and interested parties in the US, if you were contemplating ordering books from me in the near future, please note that there are changes upcoming in how they may be shipped. There may be tariffs imposed (unclear?), but also the Dutch mail informed me that they may not use US Postal Service anymore for packages because of the coming changes.
I am not sure how this will pan out for books. All I know is if you order before August 22, I can still send it out the old way.
UPDATE as of September 20: shipping is possible again, but it is a good idea to contact me before ordering.
The End of the World
“A child without mother or father, with no brothers or sisters, who belonged to no one and had no home anywhere, came to the idea of running off, all the way until the end of the world.” Robert Walser, from ‘The End of the World’
My “Robert Walser book” (as some of you may have come to know it) has finally been finished and copies are now ready to be shipped. Both conceptually and practically it was a book journey full of detours and stops and restarts. Starting with an observation at the site of Robert Walser’s grave, after retracing his last walk – or perhaps already with a Robert Walser storybook I received as a child – it did take a while to get to the end of the world (not to worry: things are simpler there).
The End of the World is an artist book in literary format about Robert Walser’s final walks and silences. The book transports the reader to the last 23 years of Walser’s life, which were spent at a psychiatric clinic in Herisau, Switzerland. From his arrival there in 1933 to his death in the snow on Christmas Day 1956, Walser ceased writing. On Sundays he would take long walks, a contrast to the weekdays filled with sorting tin foil at the institution’s workshop and making crossword puzzles in the common room.
The book draws on excerpts from Walser’s asylum file and on photographs that I took at the graveyard in Herisau where Walser is buried. The photographs show scenes depicted on the gravestones surrounding Walser’s grave. The dreamy landscapes and paths encountered there seemed like a continuance of Robert Walser’s walk to me. The layout of the book mirrors the repetitive nature of Walser’s days, weeks, years at the clinic – and blank space is treated as a meaningful element.
The book concludes with an afterword, overview of sources and biographical sketch.
The initial research was made possible by a residency at the Jan Michalski Foundation, in Montricher, Switzerland. The book production was made possible in part by grants from the Jaap Harten Fund and from the Mondriaan Fund, both in Amsterdam.
The book is self-published in an edition of 350 copies. It is printed in duotone offset and has a cold-glue binding. Printing and binding were done at Wilco Art Books in The Netherlands. 208 pages, size 11,5 x 18 cm, 23 photographs. ISBN: 9789080788435.
Priced at € 37,50. Shipping is € 5,- in The Netherlands, € 8,50 elsewhere. Order here or by contacting me, also of course with your questions and comments.
Further info on this page.
Earth Station launches with AMBruno in London
I am happy to announce my new book Earth Station, made as part of AMBruno’s project ‘Intervals’ which will launch at Tate Britain in London this week (see below).
The book uses intervals between images found on postcards from the 1950s and 1960s, when mass tourism began to grow, as a playful method of critique – creating brief visual stories about how humans changed nature. See more images here (though because of the intervals, this book needs to be held in hand: without intervals there is no story).
Edition limited to 50 copies (not numbered), inkjet printed and wire bound. 40 pages, 14 full color illustrations, size 21,5 cm wide x 17,2 cm high.
Priced at € 45 plus shipping. Order through my webshop or by sending an email. If ordering, note that the book will be shipped as of next week. The book will also be available at the multiple book fairs AMBruno participates in during 2024/5.
This Friday October 18, AMBruno will present an afternoon of talks at Tate Britain around ‘Intervals’. A panel conversation with AMBruno artists and past project selectors, including Gustavo Grandal Montero, Elizabeth James, Sophie Loss, Richard Price, Chris Taylor and Cally Trench, will discuss ‘Intervals’ in the context of the group’s history. Follow this link for the details. It is free to visit this.
Next week, AMBruno will also show the project at the Small Publisher’s Fair in Conway Hall (October 25 and 26). Yay!
About AMBruno
The artists’ association AMBruno focuses on developing and promoting the book as a key medium in art. Founded in 2008, the group’s members change with each new project, where artists create books based on a specific theme each year.
In 2024, an open call invited artists to create books exploring the theme ‘Intervals.’ This could refer to an intervening time, a pause or break, a gap between two things, or the difference in pitch between two sounds. Fourteen artists were selected for this project by Sarah Bodman, an artist and scholar from the Centre for Print Research at UWE Bristol. The artists are Karen Blake, Helen Douglas, David Howes, Julie Johnstone, Philip Lee, Sophie Loss, John McDowall, Alastair Noble, Redell Olsen, Ximena Pérez Grobet, Peter Rapp, Rachel Smith, Elisabeth Tonnard and Maria White.
Exhibition in Arles
Métamorphose(s) opens tomorrow. This is an exhibition in which Antony Cairns, Stephen Gill, Galerie Christian Berst, NSDOS, Bill Viola and myself show work in collaboration with Publicis Luxe. See the invite below.
The show is curated by Julien Frydman at Les Collatéraux in Arles and runs during the opening weeks of the Rencontres d’Arles from July 3 – 12.
I have collaborated with Guillaume Gaud of Publicis Luxe to create an interactive spatial installation based on my book of found conversational phrases A Dialogue in Useful Phrases. Two chairs will invite the audience to be actors in the work. By sitting down, a viewer will automatically cause a series of conversational phrases to start appearing (basically a monologue, as if reading only the left pages or only the right pages in the original book). When a second person sits down in the other chair, a second series of conversational phrases starts to appear in answer and a dialogue in useful phrases will ensue. This serendipitous dialogue of miscommunications will be different each time because it will be influenced by when exactly each person sits down.
Exhibition in The Crocodile
A tiny solo exhibition of mine, curated by Jason Fulford, is on view in The Crocodile. This is an exhibition that you can see and hear and imagine exclusively if you meet up with Jason personally, since he carries it on his person. It can be encountered this way from May 23 until roughly August 1. After appearances in Spain and New York, the gallery is now on its way to San Francisco.
Jason prints letterpress cards for each show (see below), this is the fourth show so far.
Book exhibitions Munich and Bristol
Work of mine is included in Library of Artistic Print on Demand, curated by Annette Gilbert. It is on view at Villa Stuck in Munich until September 15th. For more information, visit the museum’s website. A book about the Library of Artistic Print on Demand is forthcoming from Spector Books. More info about the whole project: https://www.apod.li/
Then this Friday the 28th is the opening of B for Book, curated by Sarah Bodman at Frankenstein Press in Bristol. It looks like a joyful eclectic mix of artist’s books. It also launches the weekend of BABE – Bristol Artist’s Book Event and runs through July 19. More information about the show here or in the press release.
Daylight
A little promotion for Daylight, a book that was published of Truus van den Boezem’s photography work. I wrote a short essay for the book, in Dutch, but an English translation is included.
It was published at the initiative of Marianne Kleijwegt by the Verbeke Foundation on the occasion of Truus’ centennial birthday. The editing, design and production is by Marie Verboven. The book is presented alongside an exhibition of Truus’ work at the Verbeke Foundation from May 12 to November 3, 2024.
The book can be purchased at the Verbeke Foundation, or at any bookstore (ISBN 9789464448191) and in case of emergency I have a few copies as well.
New print run of Oceanus
Oceanus was reprinted. Already quite an oldie, but it is one of those books I would make again right now and it’s nice to keep it available. Not that this is always easy to do. The photo above was taken in the town of Buren in The Netherlands and says something like “Create your happiness. From print and press”. It should perhaps in 2023 be something like “Try and stay sane. Despite the disregard of paper grain”. Anyhow, some attempts later there are now happy books. It is the third print run if the print-on-demand version is counted as one (first) print run. I have again made some changes in paper stock. The book is printed digitally, in B&W.
Elisabeth Tonnard 