19 April 2013
Exhibition explores the book as performance
A new Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) exhibition opening next week explores the concept of books acting as a form of performance by examining the work of dozens of artists, including Ian Hamilton Finlay, Richard Long and Yoko Ono.
‘a book is a performance’ is an exhibition that showcases artists’ books and multiples to explore and expand the twin concepts of performance and performativity. Considering how books stage images, enact ideas and direct experiences to subversive effect, it presents thoughts and actions grounded in ritual, gesture, mime, documentation and scores through works by leading contemporary artists.
A preview of the exhibition will be held on Wednesday, 24th April at the Centrespace gallery within the Visual Research Centre at DJCAD, which is located on the lower floors of the Dundee Contemporary Arts building. The exhibition will be on view from 25th April to 26th May. The preview will feature a performance by Alec Finlay, an artist and poet whose work crosses over a range of media and forms, from poetry, sculpture, and collage, to audio-visual, neon, and new technology.
Much of Finlay’s work reflects on human interaction with nature and considers how we as a culture, or cultures, relate to landscape and ecology. He has published over twenty poetry and artists’ books and will stage a performance reading at the preview entitled ‘Out of Books’.
On 18th May, Sarah Sanders, an artist who has exhibited worldwide and whose practice involves action and intervention in a particular space, will stage a further live performance, involving three-hours of live writing in the gallery, entitled ‘I used to’.
Sophia Hao, Curator of Exhibitions at DJCAD, said, “Artists and writers have engaged with the performative possibilities of the book for over a century. At the heart of the fascination with the book is its potential as a transformative space, in which identities and places can be unsettled.
“The French 19th century poet Mallarmé imagined his Le Livre emerging as a series of ritualised séances, whilst the modernist artist Marcel Duchamp’s Green Box staged the book in order to subvert its traditions. Drawing upon a broad range of contemporary works, 'a book is a performance' follows Mallarmé’s desires and Duchamp’s lead and situates the book and the act of reading as a performative practice inscribed with gesture and action.
“The works in ‘a book is a performance’ cumulatively reveal the book as the anchor point for riveting and radical forms of experience, in which a turned page can lead into an encounter with performative acts, gestures and beautiful subversions. To illuminate and evoke the printed page as a live space, the exhibition will be opened by a performance reading by Alec Finlay, as well as a durational performance by Sarah Sanders on Saturday 18 May as part of the Ignite 2013 festival in Dundee.”
The works featured in the exhibition are selected from the collection and recent acquisitions of the Centre for Artists’ Books at VRC. The exhibition is co-curated by Exhibitions at DJCAD and Dr Lisa Otty, an AHRC Early Career Fellow at The Centre for the History of the Book, University of Edinburgh.
A preview of ‘a book is a performance’, with a performance by Alec Finlay takes place at 5pm on 24th April, with the exhibition opening the following day. The durational performance by Sarah Sanders will take place on 1-4.30pm on 18th May, and the exhibition runs until 26th May.
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