Certain Trees: the Constructed Book, Poem and Object, 1964-2008
A poem is a kind of object, and the material character of a book its most important message
Certain Trees: the Constructed Book, Poem and Object, 1964-2008 is taking place at the Victoria & Albert Musum.
This display of books, objects and constructions reveals an energetic community of poets and artists in Britain discovering and developing the expressive potential of publication as an art practice. Heirs to the Concrete Poetry movement of the 1960s, all acknowledge the vital influence of the internationally-recognised Scottish poet, artist and landscape-gardener Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925-2006). Their work is far from uniform, each moving the tradition on in an original way, but shared characteristics include brevity, a subtle sense of colour, wry humour, and an unpretentious relationship to art and literature of the past. Themes of landscape and locality are typically non-metropolitan and domestic. Some of the works look like quite ordinary books, but their use of mainstream conventions is purposeful, questioning or amused, while the modest poem-card becomes an artwork.
In 1964 the Tarasque Press was founded in Nottingham by Stuart Mills (1940-2006) and Simon Cutts, while Finlay's Wild Hawthorn Press, though founded earlier, now began publishing numerous booklets of his own poetry. The 1970s saw Cutts create Coracle Gallery and Press in South London, and the birth of the Moschatel Press partnership of Thomas A Clark and Laurie Clark (Nailsworth, Gloucestershire). In the 1980s Coracle functioned as a creative centre for artists, among them John Bevis and Colin Sackett, to develop their own projects, such as Chocolate News Books. American artist Erica Van Horn joined Coracle. New initiatives of the 1990s by associated artists included David Bellingham's imprint WAX366 (Glasgow) and Martin Rogers's Research Group for Artists' Publications (Derby)
The importance of the group to the 16 individuals represented here is both practical and inspirational: a matter of works produced in collaboration, of shared enterprises such as bookshops, galleries and magazines, and in some cases a call and response of allusions between works by different people. The selection emphasises the idea of 'construction', proposing an equivalence between 'making' in language and in art. A poem is a kind of object, and the material character of a book may be its most important message.
The display is taking place in Room 74 from Tuesday April 1st to Sunday April 17th.
How to get thereNearest stop for both buses and underground is South Kensington. Click HERE for map.
By Bus -Buses 49, 70, 74, 345, 360, 414, 430 & C1
Tube -The Piccadilly, Circle & District lines all call at South Kensington.
