anthologies
bookartbookshop
9 October 6 – 8pm
continues until 21 October

Everybody, not just artists, keeps a notebook or sketchbook. Mine always seemed to connect up into a little story.  At first it was just a travel diary, a day at the fun fair or a trip across Canada in a bus. It wasn’t until several years later, when I met Deirdre Kelly of the Hardware Gallery that I realised what I had made was an artist book.

Now I am working with Tanya Peixoto to create anthologies, an overview of books I have made over the years. Tanya and I first worked together in 1997 to create Tales of New York. Looking over my books from the last 20 years has made me think.
The first book I made was called Florida.

I went down to visit my parents in their condominium in Florida. This block was complete but the next was half constructed and standing idle. Turns out that the sewage hadn’t been resolved and was flooding. In those days you could still wander a few meters out of any of these developments and withing quarter of an hour reach open ground, with a sense of the natural environment and the Everglades just a little to the west.

Florida – or you can’t Fight Progress, was a pop up book in an edition of one copy. It tells the history of Florida in picturebook style, from the arrival of Ponce de Leon up to the Miami Riots. At the core is a simple question. “Who made such a hash of this natural paradise?”

‘Tales of New York’ was created with Tanya Peixoto, and is a diary of driving a cab in New York. this was in the pre-Giuliani days of raucous New York nights. Scorsese move over, there is even a film which Caroline Gardiner made of it. Tales of New York film here on ShootingPeople.org

Now, many years later, I find myself working with Tanya again to present a new book – roadbook, as well as to create an installation in the bookartbookshop windows. This has made me look back at the prototypes, models all sorts of related sculpture and prints. A selection of these pages fallen from books will be on view.

supermercato
All of the books seem to be about an ordinary day which unexpectedly takes on mythic significance. This, Michael Holland has said “more than anything shows Klein’s love of life and how he rejoices in what some might call the mundane. In his hands the ‘everyday’ and the humdrum pulsate with energy.”

So a little motorcycle trip with a friend turned into a night of metamorphosis. Not too surprising, since we travelled under a full moon at Ferragosto. There were 15 of us, and we slept out in the open on a hill with an abandoned monastery. It was the raging storm which changed everything.

Which brings me to the subject at hand. All of these books had prototypes, sketchbooks and initial forms which became consumed in the final artist book. It is these fragments – like unfinished sentences, words out of context, abbreviated thoughts – which I have chosen to anthologise. All in the aid of an official launch for roadbook.

roadbook was the inspiration for the first long passage work I created – call it Road 1. Now, I will be launching a book which recreates this original processional work. It is a concertina book with magnetic fasteners, allowing the print to be removed and framed.

roadbook will be launched at
bookartbookshop
17 Pitfield St., Hoxton
London N1 6HB
launch 9 October 6 – 8pm
installation continues until 21 October