Hi guys! I’ve written some brief descriptions of the publications included in the display I set up for Womanspace, located in the central vitrine of the library. You can access the Reading List for this display here. Click the linked titles for access to the title’s description in the library’s online catalogue.
The selves was published in 2010 by Drawn & Quarterly. It is a beautiful publication from artist Sonja Ahlers. Ahlers is a self-taught artist and writer interested in direct and intimate methods of communication, memory, and popular culture. In The selves, Ahlers collages together materials including stickers, cards, magazine photos, drawings, and hand-written text. The Selves explores and exposes the cultural imagery that aids in the construction of personal identity.
Gertrude Stein is a zine by Eloisa Aquino, published in 2010 with B & D (bug and duck) Press. Eloisa Aquino was nominated in 2010 for Printed Matter’s Awards for Artists. In the same year, B & D Press participated in the New York Book Fair. Gertrude Stein is the second issue of the series entitled The Life and Times of Butch Dykes. The Life and Times of Butch Dykes won the Best English Zine award in Montreal’s Expozine who praised the series saying, “It has everything a zine should have : a good story, a nice hand-made cover, not to mention an important subversive history lesson”. The zines describe women throughout history who have challenged notions surrounding gender and sexuality. Each small issue contains illustrations and hand-written text. Gertrude Stein tells the story of the avant-garde female writer, whose large influence continues to this day.
Click here to view other issues of The Life and Times of Butch Dykes on B & D’s website.
I featured Do You Love Me? as Book of the Week on February 14th. Click here to check out the post!
Drawn to the magazine format because of it’s potential to foster raw self-expression, Baumgardner started publishing her zines in 1976 while she was studying. Independently publishing and distributing her work, Baumgardner made seminal contributions to both zine culture and mail art. Her publications have been included in many international exhibitions, publications, and collections.
Bikini Girl is a series of xeroxed fanzines. The zines are all produced with pink paper, a color which Baumgardner associated with energy and stimulation. The title “Bikini Girls” was inspired by her previous series Modern Girls, as well as a mid-60s’ Science-Fiction movie. Each issue varies in format – one includes a sound recording, another a pair of psychadelic glasses. Our Special Collections holds issue 8, created in the style of the initial issue of Bikini Girl. While issue 1 was produced in an edition of 50 copies, for issue 8 10000 copies were produced. It’s 5.5 x 8.5 inches, a size which mimics the TV-guide format, and also allowed for the lowest-production costs. From the beginning, Bikini Girl was well-recieved. In a past reflection on her work (which Baumgardner reads aloud in one of her weird vlogs), Baumgardner writes that the Bikini Girl subscribers were “amused by a magazine which dealt with these themes: Shoes, religion (especially Catholicism), China, Joe Bonomo, art, new wave music, bondage, S&M, go-go girls, amphetamines, the East Village”.
Don’t get lonely, don’t get lost, Elizabeth Belliveau
This charming and honest publication consists of full-color images and text, combining Elizabeth Belliveau’s poetry, stories, drawings, embroidery, paintings, notes, and more. The texts included describe the artist’s perspective through poetic and humorous stories about the dogs of feminist icons and the trials and tribulations of love. The intimacy of the texts and images blend together to create a visual diary. The book also includes a DVD of Belliveau’s animated film, Margaret’s Mountain.
Take Care of Yourself, Sophie Calle
“I received an email telling me it was over.
I didn’t know how to respond.
It was almost as if it hadn’t been meant for me.
It ended with the words, “Take care of yourself.”
And so I did.
I asked 107 women (including two made from wood and one with feathers),
chosen for their profession or skills, to interpret this letter.
To analyze it, comment on it, dance it, sing it.
Dissect it. Exhaust it. Understand it for me.
Answer for me.
It was a way of taking the time to break up.
A way of taking care of myself.” – Sophie Calle
In Take Care of Yourself multiple papers, DVDs, Braille endpapers, and booklets are bound together in an eye-catching pink metallic cover. Beyond it’s aesthetic quality, the publication is an interesting exploration of lost love and identity.
Published to coincide with Calle’s exhibition at the 2007 Venice Biennale, Take Care of Yourself investigates heartache, emotion, and the diverse professional vocabularies of women. The analysis’ of Calle’s breakup letter come strictly from women, each asked to interpret the email according to her profession. The various interpretations of the letter touch on subjects such as anthropology, philosophy, law, theater, opera, and more. The publications includes these interpretations printed, an image of the author, and sometimes digital documentation.
Canadian Women’s Studies = Les Cahiers de la Femme
Canadian Women’s Studies published feminist quarterlies from 1978-81. Founded with the goal of creating an accessible forum for all women, the issues devote themselves to current writing and research on a wide variety of feminist topics. The library’s Special Collection houses three of the magazines.
Lesbian and Politics (vol. 16, number 2), published in Spring 1996, investigates both the possibilities and contradictions implied in lesbian activism and theory. The Winter issue of 1997, entitled Female Spirituality (vol. 17, no.1) attempts to present the large variety of female experiences of spirituality. Women 2000: Eradicating Poverty and Violence in the 21st Century (vol. 20, no.3) is a special edition that reflects the desire to take stock of where the feminist movement was at in the year 2000.
Loci : three perfomances for interior spaces, Allyson Clay
Loci by Allyson Clay is a small hand-bound book that includes instructions for performances accompanied by diagrams displaying the performer’s movements. This book engages with subjects including conceptual art, writing, feminism, performance, and identity. It makes reference to other artist’s books like Lawrence Weiner’s Statements from 1968 (also in the library’s collection), which uses text to describe projects. Throughout Loci, Clay’s writing slips from straightforward descriptions into free verse poetry, subverting it’s own authority. The short and sharp texts gain momentum through their fragmentation. Loci reflects Clay’s interest in women and urban spaces, in art, life, domestic space, women’s literature, in writing practices, and performance.
Anne Collier: woman with a camera (35 mm), Anne Collier
Published by Hassla Books in an edition of 600 copies, Woman with a Camera (35 mm) consists of 44 pages, including full-color photographs and an essay by Tom McDonough. The project presents a presents a fragmented sequence in 18 individual frames from the film Eyes of Laura Mars from 1978. Collier’s work focuses on the specific moments in the film where fashion photographer Laura Mars (played by Faye Dunaway), in the midst of taking a photo, has a terrifying premonition of a murder. In Tom McDonough’s essay, he describes the complexity of this project,
“Laura’s active looking, a displaced form of excessive or dangerous desire, is punished: her usurpation of voyeurism calls forth extremes of murderous sadism. Collier mobilizes these references, returning to the conjunction of woman and photographic apparatus as the site of a knot of overdetermined meaning. Her aim is not so much to expose the ideology of sexual difference behind the cliche, than to explore the very interminability of such taboos in seeing.”
Sarah Crowner: Format, Sarah Crowner
Format is Sarah Crowner’s first widely distributed artist book, published by Primary Information in 2012 in an edition of 1000 copies. I love this publication.
The project is 86 pages of collage works that combine a diversity of images collected from printed matter (magazines, books, posters, newspapers, postcards, and more). Format explores both the format of the book itself, as well as form and formalism. The project is essentially a visual representation of Crowner’s working practice. Based out of Brooklyn, Crowner creates sewn paintings based on specific compositions from history. In this publication, one can gain a sense of her artistic concerns including physical engagement, historical investigations, and overlaps of forms in painting and in everyday life.
Anyone telling anything is telling that thing, Eve Fowler.
I have featured this publication before in the Book of the Week series. Click here to access the post!
Inbetween: A Documentary Invention, Karin Geiger
Inbetween: A Documentary Invention is a cardboard envelope with color postcards inside. In the introduction the project is described as “a portrait of the structures and relations of teenage girls’ everyday life, as it is of the discourse on the photographic image in cultural production”. The series does not form a continual, chronological narrative – the cards can be ordered according to the viewer. Rather, the materials connect to one another by association and comparison, blurring distinctions between documentary and fiction. This publication is a poignant exploration of the role images play in the social construction of adolescent female identity.
The first generation : women and video, 1970-75, JoAnn Hanley
The first generation : women and video, 1970-75 is a publication that accompanied the exhibition of the same name in 1992. The exhibition presented seminal video works produced by female artists in the 1960s and 70s. It functions as an early history of the development of video as an artistic medium, and as evidence of the important role women played in video’s creation and definition. This publication includes essays from curator JoAnn Hanley, and from co-curator Ann-Sargent Wooster. It also provides descriptions and documentation of the individual works included in the exhibit.
We won’t play nature to your culture, Barbara Kruger
Published by the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, this publication presents seminal works from the influential, feminist artist Barbara Kruger. We Won’t Play Nature to your Culture presents Kruger’s iconic combination of found imagery and bold use of text. Kruger approaches notions of male dominance, using languages (both verbal and visual) to address a female audience. This work attempts to change the concept of gendered viewing, giving females a dominant voice in spectatorship. The immediacy and power of the works included in this publication remain as impacting as ever.
Letters from Home Aa Bb Cc is a project by Amy Jones, Margaret Naylor, and Jil P. Weaving, published in 1992 in Vancouver. It is a collection of cards in a cardboard slipcase, inspired by aspects of ABC books and flashcards. This publication seeks to address stereotypes and realities of mothering. Highlighting issues of the social and physical isolation of mothers, the set of cards recognize the value and responsibility involved in motherhood. Letters from Home Aa Bb Cc seeks to disassemble the language of mothering to introduce a new vocabulary, to provide “Tools that give the ‘mum’ a voice”.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Zoe Leonard
I was pretty excited when I found this book by Zoe Leonard. Published by Art Metropole in 1998 as an edition of 1000, Ladies and Gentlemen is a staple-bound book consisting of twelve black and white photographs. The images document signs used for designating womens’ and mens’ washrooms in situ.
Ladies and Gentlemen was a part of the series of 20 artists’ pamphlets from Little Cockroach Press. The pamphlets were originally distributed by Art Met free-of-charge, highlighting both established and emerging artists of the time. The library’s collection has 10 of these publications, including works by Stan Douglas, AA Bronson, Sonic Youth, Maurizio Nannucci, and more.
Sarah Lucas : after 2005, before 2012, Sarah Lucas
Published in 2012 by Walther König, After 2005, Before 2012 surveys the work of British artist Sarah Lucas from 2005-2012. The book moves through several important sculptural works from series like Penetralia (a series of totemic phallic sculptures which respond to Suffolk’s landscape, begun in 2008) of and NUDS (a series begun in 2009, in which nylon tights stuffed with fluff create ambiguous forms relating to the female body). Lucas emerged as one of the major Young British Artists in the 90s. Lucas uses sculptural and associative found materials in her exploration of the euphemisms, repression, and sculptural possibilities of the sexualized body.
After 2005, Before 2012 presents the majority of Lucas’ fleshy-toned, softly-textured sculptures with black-and-white documentation, a decision that provides a fresh look at these familiar, retrospective works. A series of interviews with Lucas by artists, curators, writers, and friends, such as Damien Hirst, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Angus Cook are also included in the book. Accompanying the publication there’s a separate booklet containing reproductions of the front and back covers of the artist’s catalogues published from 2006-2011.
Carol Sawyer as Amazonia was published by Artspeak Gallery in 1998 as an exhibition catalogue in the form of a zine. A parody of Wonder Woman, the zine tells the story of Carol Sawyer’s transformation into super-heroine “Amazonia”. The publication begins with text and colored-photographs narrating Carol Sawyer’s transformation. Beginning with a walk in the woods, Sawyer is drawn to a site where she discovers some mysterious clothing. Upon this discovery, Sawyer is magically transformed into an energetic Amazon. This story is followed by a discussion between three women (“the three bad sisters”) who have met prior to the closing night of the exhibit in order to discuss Sawyer’s recent chance. The style and format of the dialogue continues with the super-hero story theme. In “The three bad sisters and the cloud of doom!”, these women discuss questions of the exhibition, the transformation, and feminist theory, patriarchy, phallocentrism, and the male gaze in relation to popular culture. This publication is entertaining and humorous, while diving into a larger feminist critique. It ends with three great photographs (accompanied by text as before) of Amazonia flying through the air and an announcement spelled out in the air with flowers reading “YOU DARE TO VEX ME? EMPRESS OF THE AMAZONS? BEGONE! LEST YOU CEASE TO AMUSE ME AND I VENT MY WRATH UPON YOU!”.
Don’t mess with Amazonia.
1000+ wishes : the wish machine, Chrysanne Stathacos
This small yet powerful book published in 1999 presents a collection of over 1000 anonymous wishes. Stathacos collected the wishes from people all around the world through a website she created in 1997 for her project The Wish Machine. The project also included an interactive public project in the form of a vending machine which dispenses multiples of photo-collages of plants and vials of the plant’s essential oil.
1000+ Wishes presents this material with text. Presented in this way, the wishes transform into poetic ramblings threading together the similarities of humanity’s hopes and dreams. The wishes also speak to a desire for peace and equality, for global action and change.
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