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| Self Organised | More | Buy | GBP 17.00 | ||
| Stine Hebert & Anne Szefer Karlsen (Eds.) |
Julie Ault Maibritt Borgen Céline Condorelli & Johan Frederik Hartle Anthony Davies, Stephan Dillemuth & Jakob Jakobsen Ekaterina Degot, Charles Esche & David Riff Barnaby Drabble Jonas Ekeberg Linus Elmes Juan A Gaitán Abdellah Karroum Livia Pancu Jan Verwoert What, How & For Whom/WHW |
The current economic situation and society’s low confidence in its institutions has suddenly demanded that artists become more imaginative in the way that they organise themselves. If labels such as ‘alternative’, ‘non-profit’ and ‘artist-run’ dominated the self-organised art scene that emerged in the late 1990s, the separatist position implied by the use of these terms has been moderated during the intervening years. This new anthology of accounts from the front line includes contributions by artists, as well as their institutional counterparts, that provide a fascinating observation of the art world as matrix of interconnected positions where the balance of power and productivity constantly shifts. |
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| Mazdaznan Health and Breath Culture | More | Buy | GBP 16.00 | ||
| Ian Whittlesea (Auth.) | This artist’s book explores the intimate relationship between Mazdaznan, Johannes Itten and the Vorkurs (Preliminary or Foundation Course) at the Bauhaus, Weimar. It is a practical guide to performing the exercises that Itten taught at the Bauhaus and a celebration of a moment of mysticism at the heart of Modernism. | ||||
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| Curating and The Educational Turn | More | Buy | GBP 18.00 | ||
| Paul O’Neill & Mick Wilson (Eds.) |
16 Beaver Group Peio Aguirre Dave Beech David Blamey & Alex Coles Daniel Buren & Wouter Davidts Cornford & Cross Charles Esche Annie Fletcher & Sarah Pierce Liam Gillick Janna Graham Tom Holert William Kaizen Hassan Khan Annette Krauss, Emily Pethick & Marina Vishmidt Stewart Martin Ute Meta Bauer Marion von Osten & Eva Egermann Andrea Phillips Raqs Media Collective Irit Rogoff Edgar Schmitz Simon Sheikh Sally Tallant Jan Verwoert Anton Vidokle Tirdad Zolghadr |
An anthology of new writing that argues for acknowledgment of an educational turn in recent art and curatorial production. Through reasoned and attentive debate, the course of curating and exhibition making into the realm of the ‘educational’ is analysed, using both empirical and theoretical tools. | |||
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| Curating Subjects | More | Buy | GBP 15.00 | ||
| Paul O’Neill (Ed.) | Julie Ault Søren Andreasen & Lars Bang Larsen Carlos Basualdo Dave Beech & Mark Hutchinson Irene Calderoni Anshuman Das Gupta & Grant Watson Clémentine Deliss Eva Diaz Claire Doherty Okwui Enwezor Annie Fletcher Liam Gillick Jens Hoffmann Robert Nickas Hans Ulrich Obrist Sarah Pierce Simon Sheikh Mary Anne Staniszewski Andrew Wilson Mick Wilson |
This sleek and serious anthology of new curatorial writing documents the inter-dependent relationships between the curatorial past, present and speculative futures and, instead of following the convention of curators writing about themselves, invites the authors to provide a text about the curatorial work of others. The result is an eclectic volume of accessible responses that provides a dynamic curatorial discourse where critical essays, theoretical explorations, propositions, historical overviews, interviews, exhibition critiques and fictional accounts sit side by side. Essential reading for students and professionals alike. | |||
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| Living Pictures: Perspectives On the Film Poster in India |
More | Buy | GBP 24.00 | ||
| David Blamey & Robert D’Souza (Eds.) |
Sara Dickey Emily King M.S.S. Pandian Christopher Pinney Rosie Thomas Patricia Oberoi |
Living Pictures is the first publication to collect and analyse a representative body of film posters produced in India from 1947, the year of Independence, to the present day. This charming book offers the uninitiated a window into the sub-continent's famously over-the-top movie industry and, for those who know it well, there is a wide selection of classic and little-known material. Street photographs show the art in situ, while essays addressing it from anthropological, sociological and design perspectives put it in broader context as a visually charismatic key to the politics, history and beliefs of India. | |||
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| Here There Elsewhere: Dialogues On Location and Mobility |
More | Buy | GBP 14.99 | ||
| David Blamey (Ed.) | Barry Curtis & Claire Pajaczkowska Tim Brennan Jane Rendell Layla Curtis Doina Petrescu Colectivo Cambalache Peter Wollen Johnny Spencer Roger Begrich & Andrea Mühlebach Mariele Neudecker Laura Ruggeri Terris Nguyen Temple David Blamey Fiona Banner Janice Kerbel Ian Whittlesea Lesley Naa Norle Lokko Markus Vater Paul O’Neill |
We live in an age of increased mobility. At the time research for this collection of essays was undertaken, post-colonial discourses tended to focus on the impact of mobility on those at the receiving end, rather than on the growing populations that now enjoy the freedom to travel worldwide. The circulation of people, culture and commodities forms the hub of our globalized culture, but where does this freedom of movement take us? In Here, There, Elsewhere, artists and writers investigate ideas surrounding the presumed benefits of mobility and address the role, impact and implications of travel for both the visitor and the visited. Through art works, photo essays, autobiography and cultural theory, contributors question the pleasure of travel and the desire to move, relocate, or adopt new identities and lifestyles. In examining how travel both defines and erodes identity, this collection addresses two key questions: when does freedom from location become dislocation and when does the ability to escape become an inability to belong? | |||
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| Self Taught | More | Buy | GBP 9.50 | ||
| David Blamey (Auth.) | Exhibition catalogue published to coincide with an exhibition by the artist at The Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London. | ||||
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| Work & Turn: Artists' Bookworks From the United Kingdom |
More | Out of Print | GBP 10.00 | ||
| David Blamey Cathy Courtney Adalsteinn Ingolfsson (Auths.) |
Phil Baines David Blamey Pavel Büchler Brian Catling Les Coleman Simon Cutts Hamish Fulton Andy Goldsworthy Ian Hamilton Finlay Waldemar Januszczak Martin Jaques Richard Long Bruce McLean & Mel Gooding Robert Maude Alan Murray Childe Roland Colin Sackett Telfer Stokes & Helen Douglas Jake Tilson David Tremlett Ian Tyson Erica van Horn Stephen Willats Adrian Wiszniewski Verdi Yahooda Silvia Ziranek |
Exhibition catalogue and reference book that links UK book art of the 1990s with artists’ publishing of the 1960s and 70s, a period that was driven by a desire to dematerialize the art object. Works by a new generation of artists are considered alongside those of seminal producers who have maintained a commitment to publishing as a viable art form. Written contributions speculate about the reason for a resurgence of interest at this time. | |||
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| 7 Day Kathmandu | More | Buy | GBP 75.00 | ||
| David Blamey (Auth.) | In keeping with the artist’s insistence on working ‘with what is already there’, this small publication dutifully documents a one-week programme of Hollywood film screenings at a pizza restaurant in Kathmandu during the early 1990s. Although these presentations were only ever intended to entice foreign customers to the restaurant with the promise of free entertainment, when examined from within the context of this ancient eastern culture the titles and the values that the movies themselves promote take on a darkly humorous air. This artist’s book project acts as a poignant reminder of the strangeness of situations where cultures collide in a globalised world. Shipping with this product includes insurance. |
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| Past Golden | More | Buy | GBP 125.00 | ||
| David Blamey (Auth.) | Produced during 1989-90, this book is an effort to get beyond stereotypes and approach a deeper understanding of India as a mythological place. Drawings in graphite and photo opaque of ordinary objects, architectural details, and landscape are juxtaposed with simple texts, typeset in both English and Hindi, to create an overall effect that is at once highly personal and yet resonant of shared experience. Shipping with this product includes insurance. |
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| Self Organised | Cover | Buy | GBP 17.00 | ||
| London, 2013 Occasional Table Soft board cover with dust jacket 215 x 115 x 22mm 168 pages Language: English Design: Jonathan Hares Published with: Hordaland Arts Centre ISBN: 978-0-949004-17-8 |
Exploring one of the most influential methods of contemporary cultural production, Self-Organised takes a broad view on the matter. Artists, curators and critics discuss empirical and theoretical approaches from Europe, Africa and South and North America to how self-organisation today oscillates between the self and the group, self-imposed bureaucratisation and flexibilism, aestheticisation and activism. The contributors identify now as a crucial moment to propose ways forward for parallel initiatives and institutions alike: from de-organisation and waiting, to rupture and coexistence of aesthetics and politics. However, what they all seem to share is a refreshing search for critical platforms of citizenship, harnessing self-determination in the wake of neo-liberal mainstreaming and right-wing populism alike. — Maria Lind |
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| Mazdaznan Health and Breath Culture | Cover | Buy | GBP 16.00 | ||
| London, 2012 Hand-sewn double spine binding 191 x 133 x 7mm 120 pages 14 illustrations by the artist 20 other illustrations Language: English Design: Joseph Pochodzaj ISBN: 978-0-94-900419-2 |
Founded by the extraordinary Dr. Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha’nish in Chicago at the start of the 20th century Mazdaznan was a religion and way of life. Dr. Ha’nish is claimed to have been variously a genius, a shepherd, a typesetter, a magician and a fraud, as well as friend and inspiration to a bewildering variety of figures including Karl Marx, Haeckel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, H.G. Wells, Annie Besant and J. H. Kellogg. Mazdaznan’s vegetarian diet, magnetic and electric sexual exchanges, breathing exercises and glandular theories were taken to Europe by its early disciples, flourishing in Switzerland, Germany and England between the wars. The Swiss artist and teacher Johannes Itten was a devout Mazdaznan and its exercises were an essential part of his courses at the Bauhaus. Health & Breath Culture has been newly illustrated by Ian Whittlesea with drawings of current Foundation students demonstrating the exercises. It is followed by a selection of found texts and images that go some way to explaining the beliefs and history of Mazdaznan. |
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| Curating and The Educational Turn | Cover | Buy | GBP 18.00 | ||
| London, 2010 Occasional Table Soft board cover with dust jacket 215 x 115 x 25mm 348 pages Language: English Design: Jonathan Hares Published with: de Appel Arts Centre ISBN: 978-0-949004-18-5 |
In recent years there has been increased debate about the incorporation of pedagogy into art and curatorial practice – about what has been termed ‘the educational turn’. In this follow up volume to the critically acclaimed Curating Subjects, artists, curators, critics and academics respond to this widely recognised sense of art’s paradigmatic re-orientation towards the educational. Consisting primarily of newly commissioned texts, from interviews and position statements to performative texts and dialogues, Curating and the Educational Turn also includes a small number of previously published writings that have proved pivotal in the debate so far. This anthology presents an essential enquiry for anyone interested in the cultural politics of production at the intersection of art, curating, and education. | ||||
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| Curating Subjects | Cover | Buy | GBP 15.00 | ||
| London, 2010 Occasional Table Soft board cover with dust jacket 215 x 115 x 25mm 232 pages Language: English Design: Jonathan Hares Published with: de Appel Arts Centre ISBN 978-0-949004-16-1 |
Introduction by Paul O'Neill & Annie Fletcher |
This book is a welcome addition to the growing literature about exhibition making. Moving away from autobiographical first-person narratives, Curating Subjects instead invites its broad range of contributors to comment upon the curatorial endevours of others. Conflating and colliding the past and present with possible futures, this book unfolds as an idiosyncratic conversation that is at once informative, entertaining and often revealing. Matthew Higgs |
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| Living Pictures: Perspectives On the Film Poster in India |
Cover | Buy | GBP 24.00 | ||
| London, 2005 8 page soft board cover 236 x 210 x 20mm 260 pages 153 Colour illustrations 8 b/w illustrations 26 colour photographs Language: English Design: Graphic Thought Facility ISBN 0-949004-15-4 |
Visual Introduction by David Blamey |
This visually alluring book provides an examination of Indian movie posters in a wide cultural context, as well as their relationship to the films they represent. Cultural signs specific to the promotional language of Indian cinema are decoded and analysed through textural contributions by design historians, sociologists and visual anthropologists to reveal links with religious iconography, devotional and ritual practices, technological developments in reprographics and social change. In celebrating poster imagery from the whole Indian subcontinent, this book challenges the primacy of Bollywood styles. Lesser-known material from film industries such as those in Tamil Nadu and Kerala is given equal recognition alongside more familiar work from Bombay. Obscure and crudely produced contemporary designs are presented on the same terms as archetypal images for classics from the golden age of Indian cinema. An innovative editorial strategy of conducting a dialogue on deep-rooted cultural issues through the frame of a disposable art form is complemented by the book's design: pages of posters presented in chronological order are punctuated by photographs of everyday street life, reflecting the experience of encountering the images in India's cities. | |||
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| Here There Elsewhere: Dialogues On Location and Mobility |
Cover | Buy | GBP 14.99 | ||
| London, 2002 8 page soft cover 237 x 155 x 22mm 272 pages 207 colour illustrations Language: English Design: Stephen & David ISBN 0-949004-13-8 |
In Here, There, Elsewhere David Blamey has very carefully placed a wide range of different pieces side-by-side. There are academic essays, reflective pieces by academics and artists, photo-essays, e-mails, lists, encounters, travelogues and more. Intriguingly, Blamey’s positioning of these various ‘pieces’ within the book offers exactly the dialogue that the subtitle of the book claims. You have to read between the essays to really build up a picture of places and mobility. One essay, for example, talks of how the residents of a Hong Kong suburb seek to live a Californian version of the American Dream. This essay is immediately followed by one in which a poet describes his search for a life beyond the American Dream, in some ways by producing a different dream of California. These two sets of experiences of place are subtly connected and contrasted simply by being placed together: spatial stories are illuminated by crumpling the map. This collection works on many different levels, in many ways it will engage intellectually and inspire new projects, but this is also about the mundane and the ordinary aspects of living in a world in which mobility is common-place and places are commonly extraordinary... this book is personally engaging, eye-catching and always thought-provoking. Placing artists’ work side by side with the work of critics changes and accentuates both, giving us a book that is far greater than the sum of its parts. It's a book worth having. Steve Pile–Contemporary |
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| Self Taught | Cover | Buy | GBP 9.50 | ||
| London, 1999 8 page soft cover 235 x 172 x 6mm 48 pages 69 colour illustrations Language: English Design: Stephen & David ISBN 0-949-00414-6 |
Photographs of used rubber bands in different configurations, each one representing a material memory of the physical forces that have been applied to an object over time. Laid out two to a page, sometimes isolated, and occasionally interspersed with images from nature: the sea, a sunset, a forest, an orchid, a tropical fish etc. | ||||
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| Work & Turn: Artists' Bookworks From the United Kingdom |
Cover | Out of Print | GBP 10.00 | ||
| London 1992
8 page soft cover 283 x 220 x 8mm 60 pages b&w and colour offset litho Language: English with, Japanese, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish editions Design: Manticora ISBN 0-949004-06-5 |
Artists’ books are original works of art, usually published by individuals of in close collaboration with technical assistants. These books must be seen as a whole: style and content merge to form an alternative reading experience. Their narrative may be played out in only a few words or over a hundred pages. Invariably, the bookwork traverses boundaries that too often exist between artistic disciplines. Artists’ books seem to remain in the mind as much for their unconventionality as much as their message. The best books are those that succeed in interrupting the tide of mindless imagery that engulfs us all with carefully considered works that challenge the viewer to a new connection with the printed page. David Blamey |
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| 7 Day Kathmandu | Cover | Buy | GBP 75.00 | ||
| Nepal, 1991 Silkscreen and letterpress printed cover and slipcase 130 x 160 x 6mm 16 pages Single colour letterpress texts with colour litho postcard insert Language: English Design: David Blamey Edition: 150 numbered copies ISBN 0-949004-07-3 |
Artist's book consisting of pale mauve pages printed with text which documents one week of western video movies playing at a local pizza restaurant in the Thamel district of Nepal's capital city. The book faithfully reproduces the film titles, complete with spelling mistakes. Item includes a postcard, has a slipcase and is in a plastic bag. Printed in Kathmandu using local materials: silkscreen, letterpress and offset litho.
Tate Artists’ Books Collection Shipping with this product includes insurance. |
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| Past Golden | Cover | Buy | GBP 125.00 | ||
| London, 1990 Case bound with dust jacket and metal slipcase with screen-printed label 130 x 160 x 16mm 48 pages Language: English, Hindi Design: David Blamey Edition: 300 signed and numbered copies ISBN 0-949004-04-9 |
This small, visually unassuming and intriguing book is the result of several months spent in India.
The hammered aluminium slipcase with a screen-printed label is immediately suggestive of Indian hand-craft and use of recycled materials. The text, in English with Hindi transliteration, conveys the reader on a tour marked out by phrases from local street signs and advertising. Juxtaposed, the single phrases propose their own darkly humorous meanings. Framed on each page is a facsimile of a leaf from Blamey's notebooks, the unevenness of their perforations making them unfamiliar to a Western eye. The simple drawings have a quality of the commonplace found object, just beyond recognition. Past Golden is a material product, a literal record and an intimately personal impression of a particular place. Yet the fragmentary, abstracted nature of its content allows the viewer to make their own journeys.
Victoria & Albert Museum Shipping with this product includes insurance. |
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| Books | |||
| Open Editions Catalogue | 1990 — 2011 | Click a cover image to navigate to the publication | |
| About | |||
| Founded by David Blamey in 1992, Open Editions operates as an independent platform for creative partnerships between artists, designers, academics, writers, curators and critics. An ethos of experimentation and equality underpins our publishing: theory and practice are combined; artists and writers exchange ideas on a level playing field; the controlled logic of academicism is eschewed in favour of the subject speaking more directly for itself. Each of our publishing projects is undertaken as a bespoke enterprise. New titles are conceived, resourced, designed and produced by contributors whose ideas coalesce around topics of interest held in common. Often, we employ an approach whereby experts from diverse fields of practice are encouraged conduct a dialogue, as opposed to making singular statements. In this way, Open Editions’ publications are conceived as workshops of ideas that contribute to an expanded notion of both making and writing about art. | |||