The Standard Book of Noun-Verb Exhibition Grammar
Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk
Published by Onomatopee, Eindhoven, 2017, 182 pages (b/w ill.), 15 × 21 cm, English
Price: €19 (Temporarily out of stock)

The Standard Book of Noun-Verb Exhibition Grammar is a partial compendium of the different modes of being that inhabit exhibitions. These different modes of being, often placed outside the realm of art objects proper, are described and activated here as crucial players in the world of contemporary art.

Maximizing a poetic resourcefulness, this book proposes the exhibition as an ecology full of things that are infinitely more dimensional than their ascribed functionality would lead us to believe, and creates a space where species meet, where ontological and epistemological registers clash, overlap, and contaminate each other, where the living and inert, organic and inorganic exchange properties, qualities, and performances.

With text contribution by Timotheus Vermeulen and drawings by Tim Hollander.

#2017 #niekolaasjohanneslekkerkerk #onomatopee #theory
Permanent Recession: a Handbook on Art, Labour and Circumstance
Channon Goodwin (ed.)
Published by Onomatopee, Eindhoven, 2019, 448 pages, 10.8 × 17.6 cm, English
Price: €17

Permanent Recession: a Handbook on Art, Labour and Circumstance is an enquiry into the capitals and currencies of experimental, radical and artist-run initiatives in Australia.

Excavating a shared history of independent practice stretching back to the 1980s, this publication situates new research within a rich continuum of debate about the Australian artmaking context.

Part research, part advocacy document, part literature review, part reader, part position paper, Permanent Recession is a living contribution to current thought. As a handbook, it is a compilation of useful information in a compact and handy form.

Designed by Paul Mylecharane and Kim Mumm Hansen of Public Office.

#2019 #onomatopee #paulmylecharane #theory
Talking to Women
Nell Dunn
Published by Silver Press, London, 2018, 215 pages, 13 × 19.6 cm, English
Price: €13

With an introduction by Ali Smith and a new Afterword by Nell Dunn.

In 1964, Nell Dunn spoke to nine of her friends over a bottle of wine about sex, work, money, babies, freedom and love. The novelist Ann Quin says she appears to be a ‘singular girl, singular and single’ but questions the use she makes of her freedom. The Pop artist Pauline Boty reveals she married ‘the first man I could talk very freely to’ ten days after meeting him. Kathy Collier, who worked with Dunn in a Battersea sweet factory, talks about what it takes to ‘get out’ of a life that isn’t fulfilling. Edna O’Brien tells us about the time she inadvertently stole a brown georgette scarf and the lesson she took from it: ‘Morality is not the same thing as abstinence.’ After more than fifty years out of print, Talking to Women is still as sparkling, honest, profound, funny and wise as when it was first published.

#2018 #nelldunn #silverpress #theory
Texts
Elizabeth Newman
Published by Discipline, Melbourne, 2019, 192 pages, 10.8 × 17.6 cm, English
Price: €9

Elizabeth Newman is best known as a visual artist whose practice encompasses a variety of media including painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation. Writing, too, is central to her art. As indicated by the twenty-five or so texts compiled in this book, all dating from the last fifteen years, Newman’s literary output extends beyond her studio practice. Many of these texts are about artworks and exhibitions—her own as well as those of other local artists: they serve a critical rather than an aesthetic function. As such, these writings offer valuable insight into Newman’s artistic intentions and motivations, and her commentaries on the art of her peers constitute a compelling partial survey of art produced in Melbourne over the last decade and a half.

Edited by David Homewood and designed by Robert Milne.

#2019 #davidhomewood #discipline #elizabethnewman #robertmilne #theory
Playing Monogamy
Simon(E) van Saarloos
Published by Publication Studio, Rotterdam, 2019, 130 pages, 12 × 18.5 cm, English
Price: €12 (Out of stock)

Through a contemporary rereading of the cult of monogamy, van Saarloos playfully queers the way in which the structure of monogamy is upheld through social convention within Western contexts. Written for more of a lay audience, the book proposes an expanded and polyamorous engagement with intimacy and sexuality as a possible alternative. Originally written in Dutch and published by De Bezige Bij, this new edition has been translated to English by Liz Waters.

#2019 #publicationstudio #simonevansaarloos #theory
Biegen
Leon Filter
Published by August Verlag, Berlin, 2014, 134 pages (b/w ill.), 10 × 16 cm, German
Price: €9

Biegen is an artist book in which the author researches the centuries-old cultural technique of „Bäume-biegen“ (Tree bending), which was used as a material education in shipbuilding and agriculture for the  production of tools and complex components. Researching European forests, archives and libraries produced a collection of sketches, photographs, notes, historical illustrations and drawings presented here in the form of a journal.

With an essay by Helmut Draxler. In cooperation with the Merz Akademie.

#2014 #helmutdraxler #leonfilter #theory