Category Archives: 2011

SANDWICH
A series of discursive pamphlets

First published in 2001, this experimental series pursued a design-led conjunction of art and theory. Contributors included philosophers, artists, and artist-writers, and sought to operate at the constantly shifting point between the two poles of popular ‘take-up’, and academic reflection.

Where academic writing may put a break on art and its concepts, in the popular realm the same ideas can circulate quite freely. If anything they are thereby accelerated, propelling thought at greater velocity. To provide a new, faster, and looser form of print communication Sandwich showcased commissioned writing and art from contemporary theorists and practitioners that were conceptual and reflective but could be accessed in a popular format, following the pamphlet/chapbook tradition.

As such it was hoped it may push, from both ends, a redirection of what writing about art and aesthetics might be. To this end, Sandwich attempted to harness the effective power of the popular through both content and form.

Each issue consisted of 1xA2 sheet, folding down to A6, with 2x cover boards affixed to the top and bottom of the folded sheet.
-A2 Sheet front: x2 commissioned texts plus 1x commissioned artwork, the latter ‘sandwiched’ between the former.
-A2 Sheet reverse: full size poster, commissioned image/text project

•  Issue 0 (Pilot issue), Autumn 2001: Mystic Materialism for Bored Aesthetes
Text a: The Song of The Norias Alphonso Lingis; Text b: Year Zero Jake Chapman
Artists project: Ovals Simon Bill; broadsheet poster/text: Bauhaus Yoga Paulina Olowska
Font: Univers; colour: PAN 032C (red)

•  Issue 1, Autumn 2004: The Science of the Becoming of Matter
Text a: The Language of Insects Nigel Cooke; Text b: Abstract Sex, an extract Luciana Parisi
Artists project: Fungi Kingdom Emanations Alison Gill; broadsheet poster/text: Compliance Aya Ben Ron
Font: Optima; colour: PAN 301C (blue)

Mainly for economic reasons only two issues of Sandwich were generated, but as an effect of the distribution/circulation of those issues I was approached in 2011 by the artist Brian Chalkley to produce another issue as the accompanying publication for his exhibition at the Horst Schuler Galerie, in Dusseldorf, Germany. I used this as an opportunity to test the formal flexibility and durable potential of the format.

•  Issue 2, Autumn 2011: Brian Chalkley: Career Girls
Artists project: Career Girls Brian Chalkley; broadsheet poster/text: Career Girls Brian Chalkley
Font: Melior; colour: C0/M55/Y100/K0 (orange)

Technical information
Published in editions of 1000 copies, by SecMoCo, London, UK; edited by Simon Josebury (issues 0 & 1), Simon Josebury, Jake Chapman and Suhail Malik (issue 1); texts and images: various contributors; size: as above; stock: 90/400gsm Chromolux, shrink wrapped; printed by Furnival Press, London (issue 0), Aldgate Press, London (issue 1), Calverts, London (issue 2).
[NB: the 2x separate cover boards, for front and back, used for issue 0 was changed to 1x cover incorporating front and back, with a spine, for issue 1]

The first issue was included in the book NoBrief: Graphic Designer’s Personal Projects (RotoVison, 2002). Selected and edited by John O’Reilly, his commentary within provides a more than decent account of the form and content:‘This art pamphlet opens up to a full poster. On one side there is an image of a work by Paulina Olowska called ‘Bauhaus Yoga’, with an essay by her in the bottom-left-hand corner, which is the back of the pamphlet.The cardboard cover is in the top-right-hand corner, hence the title ‘Sandwich’. The other side contains, among other items, an essay called ‘Meatphysics’ by artist Jake Chapman.This is the first issue of Sandwich and is as much an object in itself as a forum for artists and writers. Designer Simon Josebury’s work for London’s Cabinet gallery has meant that this pamphlet has a unique perspective that is both highly intellectual and raw’.

Testing
Sandwich existed as a journal but also as a pamphlet/broadsheet/poster, a formally delimited space, but one with infinite potential, where text and image could combine to generate new meanings.

BRITISH PAVILLION Mike Nelson
British Council

Mike Nelson represented Britain at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011, this edition was published to accompany his installation in the British Pavillion that year. Commissioned by the percipient Richard Riley, SecMoCo were asked to work with the artist for the second time (see Triple Bluff Canyon, Modern Art Oxford) on devising a publication appropriate to his work.

First published, in an edition of 1,500 copies, by The British Council, London, UK, June 1, 2011; commissioning editor: Richard Riley; coordinating editors: Gemma Latty, Emma Williams; texts: Dan Cameron, with an interview between the artist, Rachael Withers and guests.

135 x 205mm; 146pp; 92 images, including 18pp colour plate section with 74 b&w images in uncoated section; casebound with 1-colour embossed cover (no dust jacket); grey endpapers; 4 colour printed ‘inner covers’; thread sewn; printed by CPI, UK.

Context from the British Council website:
Throughout his career, Nelson has constantly returned to and re-examined territories within his own practice. […] For the British Pavilion in 2011, Nelson elected to take as his starting point another of his own key works from the past decade, Magazin: Büyük Valide Han, originally built for the 8th International Istanbul Biennial in 2003. […] Nelson has referred to the work for Istanbul as being a parasitical installation that had lodged itself into a 17th century building. Based on the photographic memory of the earlier work, with I, Impostor, Nelson not only rebuilt the original darkroom but sections of the caravanserai itself, so that now a building, from another time and place, exists inside the late 19th century British Pavilion in Venice.

The British Council published a fully illustrated book to commemorate Mike Nelson’s exhibition, which includes newly commissioned texts by Dan Cameron and Rachel Withers, and colour plates of the new work in progress.