WKB18 - The Artist Book Week
ArtisBook is organising the WKB18 in collaboration with twenty-five galleries, museums and other institutions in the city of Groningen: exhibitions, lectures, performances, workshops and conversations about artists' books from the sixties up until 2018. At Noorderlicht - where we turn The Week into three weeks – the books and work of six artists will be exhibited: Wil van Iersel, Elisabeth Tonnard, Jan van der Til, Anouk Kruithof, Carina Hesper and Jan Dirk van der Burg.In this case, the 'books' we are showing are not the carriers of art but the artworks themselves.
Wil van Iersel – Every Day a New Photo Book
Wil van Iersel (1965) is based in Amsterdam. He is a documentary photographer working on various long-term projects in which he wants to shed light on the absurdity of human existence. During WKB18 he will present ‘Every Day a New Photo Book’. For the past twelve years, he has made a photobook every day for one month of the year. They are printed and published on the day they are made. The books at Noorderlicht are placed separately on wooden strips and visitors are free to look in them. The installation as a whole is evocative of a minimalist artwork.
Elisabeth Tonnard – The Plan
In ‘The Plan’ several of Elisabeth Tonnard’s (1973) sources of inspiration come together. She is interested in the white in a text and is fascinated by printed matter, especially by East German propaganda books. ‘The Plan’ is a manual for everyday life: whether you’re doing sports, writing a book or going to war, Tonnard advises everyone to always have the ‘The Plan’ at hand. It consists of a book and a flyer, which form a whole. The book features 26 images from the DDR in the nineteen-eighties, and each of the 150 copies contains a different, original DDR flyer. Tonnard’s books are held in the collections of Centre Pompidou, Getty Museum, the New York Public Library and the Kunstbibliothek Berlin.
Jan van der Til – Book XX
Noorderlicht has the scoop exhibiting ‘Book XX’ by the Groningen artist Jan van der Til (1972). Printed on this carpet measuring 297 x 221 cm is a large photograph of female genitalia. It is a crop of an existing image from the book ‘Voor onszelf. Vanuit vrouwen bekeken: lijf en seksualiteit’ (For ourselves. From the female perspective: body and sexuality) by Anja Meulenbelt (1979, Feministische Uitgeverij Sara). Three more of Van der Til’s artist books can be seen at the CBK during the Artist Book Week.
Anouk Kruithof – Automagic
‘Automagic’ is a book object by the Dutch visual artist Anouk Kruithof (1981), with images from her automagic archive, made over the last twelve years using iPhones and small digital cameras.The story that is told is entirely subject to the viewer’s associations. The nine different books – with analogue photo montages, screenshots, reproductions, edits and added text – are put together with a textbook in a transparent perspex box. By using different types of paper, a multi-layered sculpture is created.Kruithof thus shows the ingenuity, adventurousness and infinite possibilities of the medium of photography and how the computer and the human mind can act as processors of ways to view our world.
Carina Hesper – Like a Pearl in my Hand
Carina Hesper (1983) reveals in her book a side of China that usually remains hidden. Many parents in China give up their new-born child if it is visually impaired, because it means a loss of status. Touched by the fate of these children, Hesper visited various locations of the Bethel orphanage in Beijing, where she photographed children with a visual impairment. ‘Like a Pearl in my Hand’ is a limited and signed edition containing 32 prints. All prints are coated with black thermochromic ink that becomes transparent through the warmth of a human hand.The underlying portraits are consequently revealed through touch.
Jan Dirk van der Burg – Tweet Bundles
Jan Dirk van der Burg (1978) photographs and films, makes books and is a Twitter biographer. His most well-known work is the photobook ‘Olifantenpaadjes’ (2011).As well as this he is bundling the best twitter accounts of the Netherlands into autobiographical anthologies in the current series ‘Tweet Bundles’, which will be shown at Noorderlicht.Van der Burg created a new platform for valuable tweets that are in danger of being lost in the recesses of the internet, manually retweeted in the medium a book. The series is a reflection on social media, a time in which everyone has gained access to their own personal propaganda channel. How do you get to know someone who you don’t know personally and which is the image that lingers? This can be read in the Tweet bundle box comprising 10 episodes, a paper monument to the early years of social media.