Stephen Gill – Shark Stimulation (Red Cross Fundraising Print)

In November this year, Typhoon Haiyan devastated the Phillipines leaving millions homeless and in need of medical attention. As with previous disasters, the British photographer Stephen Gill has released a fundrasing print, the proceeds from which will go to the Red Cross. This image is from his latest series Best Before End, where images have been processed in the presence of various energy drinks which distort the final image. The 12×10 inch print comes in an edition of 100 and is £68. In addition (subject to availability) Stephen is including a saddle stitched newspaper entitled Not In Service with every order. This was published on the occasion of Gill’s retrospective at Foam gallery in Amsterdam earlier this year. The 28 page paper contains images from many of his projects including Talking to Ants, Off Ground, Hackney Wick, Best Before End, Hammer and Blackberry, Hackney Flowers, A Series of Disappointments, Trolley Portraits and Billboards. These papers are not for sale, they are only distributed with purchases from his website, Nobody Books, making them highly collectible in their own right.

To purchase a print and support this worthwhile cause click here

Daido Moriyama – Menu printing show

Last week saw the opening of the latest exhibition at Tate Modern, William Klein + Daido Moriyama. Both photographers are renowned for their gritty depiction of urban life on the streets of  New York and Tokyo; in this exhibition the similarities in their approach to documenting the city are explored in great detail through works that cover the 50’s to the present day. A particular focus of the Moriyama section, is the artists relationship with publishing. He is a prolific producer of books, producing over 85 books and magazines during his career, some of which have become highly collectible.

To coincide with the show, Moriyama recreated his 1974 Printing Show in conjunction with Goliga and Tate Modern. In the original show, Moriyama set up a wall of images taken during a visit to New York and a bank of photocopiers. Visitors were then allowed to select images that would then be printed and bound in to a unique book entitled Another Country in New York. For this show, entitled Menu, Moriyama mounted 60 double-page spreads on the walls of the East Room at Tate Modern and allowed ticket holders to select 20 of these images, in whichever order they wanted, which were then bound inside a silkscreened cover (choice of two covers, created during the event). Moriyama was also on hand to sign the finished book. The whole process created a totally unique book, I would be amazed if any two books were the same!

The welcome sign

The wall of images

The tough job of making your selection!

Silkscreening of the book covers

One of the silkscreens

The two book cover options

Where the book was assembled

Daido Moriyama signing the finished product

M/M Paris – Carpetalogue

Last Thursday was the beginning of a busy weekend for art lovers in London as the art-world descended on the city for the Frieze art fair. Whilst the fair got under way in Regents park, galleries all over London opened new shows. Top of my list was the M/M Paris exhibition at Gallery Libby Sellers. It had been six years since M/M Paris last exhibited in London, so this was a long overdue opportunity to see their work up close and in the flesh. For this exhibition, Carpetalogue, M/M Paris recreated four of their works as enormous hand made carpets. The carpets took their designs from a variety of sources in the M/M Paris archive including their icon The Agent, pages from a sketch book and a Givenchy invite. The carpets were presented like pages of a book on multicoloured wooden frames (the weight of the carpets was so great that the frames needed some unexpected reinforcement to cope with them).

In addition to the carpets, M/M Paris were also launching their new retrospective monograph The M to M of M/M Paris. Both Mathias and Michaël were on hand to sign copies of this and a selection of their other books, including two new limited edition books, Slatur and The Givenchy Files (which I will post about later). For those of you in London you can visit a pop-up shop in the gallery where you can buy a wide range of new and hard to find books and objects from M/M Paris, for those of you around the world you can buy direct from M/M Paris here.

The back of the carpet and the frame

Pop-up shop to fulfil all your M/M Paris desires

Francis Alys – Untitled Print

dOCUMENTA 13 is a festival that runs from June to September in Kassel, Germany and brings together over 300 participants. The festival is spread across numerous sites and includes exhibitions, lectures, seminars and poetry readings presented by artists and academics from all over the world. Among the artists participating in this festival is Francis Alys who is showing a new work commissioned by dOCUMENTA. Belgian-born artist Alys is internationally renowned and recently had a retrospective at Tate Modern which was highly acclaimed. His work, which spans painting, film, sound and installation, has a strong political theme and often highlights social and political injustices. For his commission, Alys created the film Reel-Unreel which sees two children pushing film reels through the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan; the film can be viewed here and is well worth watching. The film is a commentary on an event that occurred in Afghanistan in 2001, I won’t say what as the story is part of the video and isn’t explained until the end.

To coincide with the festival, Alys has produced a limited edition print; as far as I am aware this is a rare event, I have been unable to track down any other edition prints by Alys, so it is sure to be a collectors item. The print, produced in an edition of 200, is housed inside a cardboard portfolio that is held closed by a ribbon. The print itself measures 21.5x28cm and is stamped and signed on the front. At present it is unavailable to buy through the dOCUMENTA website but can be ordered through the Walther Konig website here.

Yoko Ono – Serpentine Gallery Exhibition

Last night was the private view for Yoko Ono’s exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London, her first exhibition in London for more than 10 years. Prior to the opening, Ono sat down with art critic Waldemar Januszczak for a Q&A session in the pavillion that drew a large crowd. Afterwards, the gallery was opened and crowds queued all night to get a look at the exhibition.

The exhibition includes both new and previously exhibited works; outside the gallery, Yoko has installed Wish Tree where visitors are asked to write down their wishes, ask a friend to do the same and then tie them to the trees. Yoko Ono has been collecting these wishes for over 15 years and now has over one million. Inside, there are numerous films and installations, including the infamous Ceiling Painting that has become a symbol for John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s first meeting. In the central atrium a perspex maze turns the viewer into the observed object and a wall of screens show iconic films from throughout her career.

Central to the exhibition, and perhaps Ono’s grandest project to date, is Smile; an international project that asks people to upload geotagged images of themselves smiling which are then turned in to a film. You can find out about uploading your smile and being part of the project here.

Visionaire 49 – Decades

For issue 49, Visionaire took us on a trip through time from the 1880’s to the present day. Housed inside a huge embossed metallic clamshell case were thirteen foilstamped 18″x14″ sewn portfolios each created by a different artist to embody their assigned decade. The roster of artists included regular contributors Mats Gustafson, Karl Lagerfeld, Nick Knight, Bruce Weber and Lamsweerde & Matadin, each taking a unique and distinct approach to the project; Bruce Weber created a tribute to the soliders of WWII, Mario Testino took images of himself from the 70’s and created colourful montages and Steven Meisel gave us a scrap book of outtakes from numerous projects in the 80’s  The issue was produced in an issue of 4000 and is no longer available direct from Visionaire but can still be found in online bookstores.

(click images to enlarge)

Clamshell Box

1880s – Craig McDean

1890s – Mats Gustafson

1900s – Nick Knight

1910s – Karl Lagerfeld

1920s – Peter Lindbergh

1930s – Glen Luchford

1940s – Bruce Weber

1950s – David Sims

1960s – Francois Berthoud

1970s – Mario Testino

1980s – Steven Meisel

1990s – Mario Sorrenti

2000s – Inez Van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin

Matthew Barney – Pace Car for the Hubris Pill

Pace Car for the Hubris Pill is a catalogue that was designed by Matthew Barney to accompany his exhibition of the same name that toured Europe in ’95-96. The exhibition included his well known films Cremaster 1, Cremaster 4 and Drawing Restraint 7 alongside lesser known earlier works OTTOshaft, Facility of Incline and Facility of Decline. As with many of Barney’s books, it included stills from the films alongside associated drawing and sculptures. The book contained a number of gatefold pages and the book was held inside a screenprinted vinyl casing, a common feature of many of Barney’s books. The print run was limited to 2500 copies, making the book highly collectible.

(click images to enlarge)

Matthew Barney – The Cremaster Cycle (Beaux Arts Catalogue)

In 2002, Matthew Barney presented his entire Cremaster Cycle for the first time in France. The exhibition, held at the Musee D’Art Moderne’s ARC site, combined the films with sculptures, drawings and site specific installations related to the films. To accompany the exhibition, Beaux Arts created a catalogue that highlighted the themes of the individual films; whilst it only runs to 32 pages it is oversized, well printed and contains a plan of the exhibition along with an essay.

(click images to enlarge)

Cerith Wyn Evans – Something Like A Picture (For Gustav) 2009 Artist Edition Print

In addition to the Marina Abramovic print I have previously posted, the Serpentine Gallery released a print by Welsh conceptual artist Cerith Wyn Evans to coincide with the Gustav Metzger exhibition at  in 2009. Wyn Evans produced the print as an homage to Metzger and hoped that the picture “attain the status of something like a key to the fabulous possibilities of the real that don’t castigate blame or promote promotion”.

The print (31.5 x 21.5 cm) was produced in an edition of 150 and is still available to purchase from the Serpentine here.

Paul Graham – Films

In anticipation of Paul Graham’s new book The Present, published by Mack Books this spring, I thought I would present his book Films which was also published by Mack last year. The images in this book are a world away from those that he is best known for, yet they fit perfectly with his ethos of using a variety of photographic techniques to tell a story. In these images, first shown at Anthony Reynolds gallery in London, Graham presents the microscopic details of a films grain. Whilst scanning his images for his career retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery, Graham also scanned the unexposed ends of the film and enlarged them producing stunning abstract constellations of colour. As the film differs so does the resulting image, no two films are the same. The book is lavishly produced, the pages are lacquered to a high gloss finish so that they have the appearance and feel of celluloid film; I was also lucky enough to pick up a signed copy from the gallery.