Saturday, January 28, 2012

20 Years In The Mail



Small 20 page publication from 2000. Originally from Weirdorama show that Hazel Jones and I did at walsall Art Gallery in 1995 and amended for Postcard Exchange project and 2000 mail art distribution ( with new cover ).

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Peace In The World Or The World In Pieces 1984




I have been having fun trying to figure out how to transfer old 'zines and catalogues to Issuu - a site for publishing online documents of all kinds. The pdf files give me a lot of trouble - also working with Word which refuses to do anything I want it to! How do I get rid of those big borders round the edges of pages for a start? Ill figure it out eventually I expect after tearing my hair out and ranting at the PC screen for hours!

I proposed the idea of a mini mail art show on an 8 foot long pinboard for the Whitechapel Open back in 1984 and to my amazement I was accepted and the board with help from my old chum Dick Turpin was duly installed in the warehouse the Whitechapel was using that year to show the work as the main gallery was closed for some reason. I didn't have a grant of any kind to had to bare the expense of materials and postage myself which wasn't easy on the dole!
The invites sent out I waited for all the mail on the theme of war and peace (or 1984 ) to come rolling in - which it did and during the exhibition , which was about a month long, I religiously took the daily mail along to the exhibition space to pin the participants work up onto the board. You can read inside the catalogue just how many and from which countries etc.

Dick's cousin or Uncle , I forget which, kindly donated the catalogue, which was litho printed in the East End of London or Barking? Anyway, totally over ambitious and a big headache at the time but I look back with fond memories of putting it all together and as I leaf through this slim volume I wonder what happened to all these people I used to correspond with?

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Art Nahpro - Envelope/Enclosures


Art (Paul Jackson ) sent this in 1985. His daughter Sara sent a small scribbled letter too.

Jose Vd Broucke - Photocopies



Jose sent these from Belgium in 1996.

Phil Mead - Postcard


Phil sent this collaged card from Hassocks in 2004.

Tetsuo Hayashi - Envelope


Tetsuo sent this in 1988. Contains piece of cloth and small etching of child's head.

Allan Revich - Stickers


Allan sent these stickers in 2008 for my Wheelie Bin Gallery.