MULBERRY TREE PRESS (PART 2)

Pinboards:
JAMIE SHOVLIN

Chat (Reconfigured) 2002/2010
722 inkjet prints on handmade paper, map pins

Chat (Reconfigured) is composed of a repeating selection of 64 images that come from the women’s weekly magazine Chat. The images act as adverts within the magazine with each advert placed after a story within the magazine and asking for readers’ ‘true-life’ stories, predominately those of a salacious or redemptive flavour, in the same vein as the featured story.

Initially a larger project, Chat was comprised of 25 panels, each a composite of the same 64 images arranged within each panel in an 8 x 8 grid. The composition of each panel was randomly decided by a variety of individuals, and this is reflected in the naming of each original panel. For Chat (Reconfigured), 12 of the panels – and therefore 12 of selection processes – have been merged into a single work.

The Ecstasy of Communication 2002/2010
Inkjet prints, pins

Whilst a student at the Royal College of Art in 2002, the artist requested a list of the most frequently borrowed books from the College library. On acquisition of this list, each book was borrowed and copied in its entirety. All text within the books that had not been highlighted by the multiple readers of the books was erased, only page numbers and underlined or otherwise emphasised text being retained. Two weeks ago the artist revisited one of the books, The Ecstasy of Communication (1987) by Jean Baudrillard (trans. Bernard and Caroline Schultze) (194 BAU) by asking a friend, a current RCA student, to remove the book from the library to be re-copied. Both 2002 and 2010 versions of this process are presented in the dissected book displayed on the pinboard. Where further annotations have occurred over the eight year time span between the two copies being made, a new page is placed over the older version.

Cabinets:
REFERENCE NOR PREFERENCE : Curated by Laura Mclean Ferris

Reference nor Preference, the two cabinets that I curated for Mulberry Tree Press began as an exploration of ideas around negation and refusal. Bearing in mind the concept of the exhibition, exploring the idea of text in space, and notion of a fictional printing press, I was interested in the idea that artists are often asked to ‘react’ or ‘respond’ to a certain piece of text or another reference, and then often have to go about squaring their own interests (and their own work) with the desires and interests of the exhibition maker or curator. I presented artists with two texts and invited them to pick one as a background context for a contribution to an exhibition about saying no, so that, contained within the premise of the project, was the idea that they could refuse to react and refuse the context, whilst remaining faithful to the project’s ideas about negation. I decided to take novellas as a starting point, partly because they are a neither/nor type of fiction, and are actually reasonably difficult to publish. Often they are not considered for solo publication because they are not long enough, but they don’t fit in a collection of short stories either because they are too large. The two texts that I gave to the artists were A Sleep and a Forgetting (1907) by William Dean Howells and Bartleby the Scrivener (1853) by Herman Melville, both of which are marked by refusal. Miss Gerald, the character in Dean Howell’s text, refuses to remember anything from her past, the background text for Alex Frost, Kate Owens and Matthew Smith, whilst Bartleby, the eponymous law writer of Melville’s novella, begins to refuse to do anything in the future, and ultimately refuses to live, as considered by Becky Beasley, Mike Harte and George Henry Longly.

Cabinet 1: A Sleep and a Forgetting
Alex Frost, Young Adults (replacers & substitutes) (2008-2010), pencil on polymer clay and casting plaster
Matthew Smith, Self Unconscious (2010), wooden spoon and tape
Kate Owens, The Carrier (2010), paper, paper glue and card

Cabinet 2: Bartleby the Scrivener
Mike Harte, Relic (Curatorially preferred) (2007-2010), framed e-mail printout
Becky Beasley, Prairie Green (from ‘Bartleby; or, The Formula’) (2010), Prairie Green paint.
George Henry Longly, Plastics (2010), plaster, pigment, brass screws

Shelves:
RUTH BEALE : Selected by Fleur van Muiswinkel

name of artist : Ruth Beale
title: Reading List for the Coalition Government
date: 11th of June 2010
medium:Installation
size: variable

Several studio meetings took place before the New Sixpenny Pamphlets were published and the two selections of the Pamphlet Library where initiated. The studio meetings where often longer than intended and headed in unexpected directions. Through discussing the history behind the collected pamphlets and drifting off into political, social and epistemological discussions connected to the present, by way of current dominant political discourses, a selection occurred.

Like any discussion, the constantly changing focus of the argument sometimes put us in an impasse of trying to verbalize in more detail what it was we meant. Yet as ever, even with all this talk, the cumulative moments and precious meetings would not have been seen in the final result. But being part of the Mulberry Tree Press made us able to show a little bit of the so-often hidden meetings, discussions and collaborations. We became another element in the never ending cycle of ‘idea-text-published-read-new idea-text-published-read-new idea-text…’.

Given all the existing texts we were dealing with, one could wonder; Who where these people before us? What did they speak about in their encounters and how did their collaborations start?

For us, our collaboration started with a moment of mis-introduction, you probably know those moments. A friend tries to introduce you but actually doesn’t know you that well and … there you are, ashamed but polite enough to exchange names and walk off thinking that you will talk more to this new person next time when your more prepared. … And then a few months later you sitting together in a studio developing a project. Something emerges. This new project becomes part of the cycle and makes you realize; this is just one worthwhile step in the ongoing process of conception, publication and historification.

Ruth Beale and Fleur van Muiswinkel

Installation View SE8

Cabinets – Kate Owens, Alex Frost, George Henry Longly,Matthew Smith, Becky Beasley, Mike Harte (curated by Laura McLean Ferris)
Pinboards – Jamie Shovlin
Shelves – Ruth Beale
Archive cabinet  (curated by Nicola Oxley)
Monitor Films (curated by Gilly Fox)