"IF A STRUCTURE MOVED FROM THERE

CAPABLE OF RELATING CONTENT FROM
HERE WITH SOME PROBABILITY OF
COMPREHENSION (USE)?"
from Lawrence Weiner, "Pertaining to a Structure : A Structure of Lawrence Weiner

"IF A STRUCTURE (ARTISTS' BOOK) IS MOVED FROM THERE
(EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY), CAPABLE OF RELATING CONTENT FROM
HERE (UBC RARE BOOKS AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS) WITH SOME PROBABILITY OF
COMPREHENSION (USE)?"

This exhibition aims to generate a conversation between books from two distinct institutional collections. The show has been curated by a visual arts faculty member and an art librarian who regularly teach with these collections, using them to illustrate interdisciplinary practices, the history of artists' books, graphic design, form, print history, materiality, and diverse publishing practices.

The six conversations organize categorically around intuitive themes and create a visual and conceptual narrative between artists' books selected from the collection at Emily Carr University Library with works selected from UBC's Rare Books and Special Collection. Each arrangement acknowledges mutual affinities such as literary source, design, and color.

Ulises Carrion, Clive Phillpot & Cornelia Lauf, and Lawrence Weiner are key figures invested in the discourse around artists' books and each has addressed structure as a central element in the consideration of book work. Conceptual artist and publisher Ulises Carrion writes "To understand something is to understand the structure of which it is a part and/or the elements forming the structure that that something is." The properties of structure became a guiding factor across the practices of many conceptual, avant-garde artists already exploring the role of text, language and form in their practices. The exploration of structure in relation to form, typography, graphic layout, materiality and image-making spans across all genres of artists' books and other print publications dedicated to emmeshing the materiality (form) with the information (idea). Librarian Phillpot and art historian Lauf build a system for categorizing artist books based on on what they term 'genre', like albums and inventories or reproductions and sketchbooks. Artist Lawrence Weiner - whose publication of the same name is the title of this exhibit - is particularly invested in the structure of language as material for making sculpture. As the Guggenheim catalog descriptions for his works states, the works' medium is 'language + the material referred to'.

Pertaining to a Structure starts six conversations between original works and their references within contemporary artists' publications around the following associative themes: Typographical Territory; Notes and Correspondence; Livre d'Artiste; The Naturalist; Minimalism, Conceptualism, and Modernist Utopias; and Literary Hybrids.

November 2 - 30, 2015
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre,UBC

Curated by Beth Howe and Larissa Beringer

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