07.04 – 26.05.2018
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If you listen very carefully, you might hear an accordion breathing in and out. In this book, it is night and the whole story is recounted in only one breath.
Jump to another stack, and we find fragments, ‘tweets’ of popular classic stories re-told. Gushing orange. Bite-size. Twitterature. The best of Penguin Books all folded into one. A third rendition embodies the sonic temperature of a previous performance. A thermometer stands in for the conductor’s baton.
For ten years, Elisabeth S. Clark has been orchestrating what she calls ‘Book Concertos’ – a performance which explores the possibility for a whole novel to be read in under ten minutes, involving as many people as there are leaves in a chosen book.
In the gallery, only piles of books remain, murmuring memories of their previous function. For Clark however, they are not merely books but also musical instruments for her performances. And here in the space, these books, ‘Eleven Instruments, Eleven Variations’ (2018), have found new forms, new sculptural manifestations dictated by each previous performance. Her custom bookshelves are designed to encase but also resonate their performative potential. Each rendition encapsulates a more complex story. The custom bookshelves become like another page, another fold, an extension of the book itself.
Downstairs, her ‘Between Words’ score (2010-2013) has a new ‘Reading Machine’ (2018); also a protagonist for a new upcoming performance.
These ‘Reading Machines’ equally serve as both methods of display (viewing structures/ music stands) and tools (sonorous instruments/props) for her performances. The score of punctuation hanging from these objects was once a poem by Raymond Roussel (‘Les Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique’). Elisabeth S. Clark appropriates this poem, isolating all the author’s punctuation and concealing all the words. She then re-translates this into a score for voice or orchestra or even dance.
The score of punctuation encapsulates both sound and silence, emotion and gesture. In fact, these intricate punctuation marks – translated here as notation, or musical notes, or conductors of expression – both encase and resonate sound in equal measures and explore possibilities of variation.
This is exemplified in her future performance propositions, ‘Conducting Conductors (Silent interpretations of a sonorous score)’ (2018) that she envisions for four performers (including a musical conductor, vocalist, dancer and musician). Four black folders present a vision for this event.
In the last room of her exhibition, Elisabeth S. Clark delicately fashions together grains of sand from more than a dozen places and countries around the world. The fragility of her gesture brings to mind the precariousness of a perfectly crafted snowball. Or could it be a hefty pile, a globe, a sphere of poetry for inexpressible language… One’s mind turns to Robert Smithson’s Heap of Language, as if she had crumpled together into a wad all the punctuation that had fallen from the pages next door. Though her gesture might seem light in touch, these grains of sand bridge places far and wide. This work, entitled ‘My World’ (2018), contains years of collecting: the artist’s own personal atlas of sand from all the places that have shaped her.
Unlike in the documentation of her installation ‘Enchanté’ (2017) presented in the gallery window upstairs, here she has chosen to gather rather than scatter particles. Both of these gestures nevertheless seem at the very heart of this exhibition.
All of the works in this exhibition span many years. And yet, like shifting sand none of them are fixed. Part installation, part performance, part sculpture, Elisabeth S. Clark’s works move freely between disciplines. Her sculptures evoke performances and her performances sculptures.
Her works become like a collection of interpretations (‘moments’) and yet her poetry is filled with a cadence that leaves you returning again and again. Under every layer is another layer, another moment.
Clark’s own words spring to mind, lifted from the page of her sketchbook:
‘I never knew that sand had so many colours…’
We are not quite sure if the artist is speaking of sand or of words or of an event or of the larger entity of language and expression.
Elisabeth S. Clark, Eleven Instruments, Eleven Variations, Book Concerto in One Act: for 75 Penguins, 2018, custom table-bookshelf in ash and steel, 75 books (Twitterature edition by Alexander Aciman & Emmett Rensin), 100 x 102 x 11 cm (table non removable). Performance presented in 2010 at Penguin Books’ Head Offices, London, UK, unique piece
Eleven Instruments, Eleven Variations, Book Concerto in One Act: for 20 Penguins, 2018, custom bookshelf in ash, 20 books (Die Schulzeit von Freddy Karpf by Manfred Goldfish), 18 x 12 x 13 cm. Performance presented in 2012 at Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral, Bad Ems, Germany,
unique piece
Eleven Instruments, Eleven Variations, Book Concerto in One Act: for 29 Penguins, 2018, custom table-bookshelf in ash and maple and steel, 29 books (A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf), 84 x 120 x 25 cm (table), 120 x 25 cm (bookshelf with removable feet). Performance presented in 2008 at R O O M Gallery, London, UK, unique piece
Eleven Instruments, Eleven Variations, Book Concerto in One Act: for 90 Penguins, 2018, custom bookshelf in ash, 90 books (The Book of Sand by Jorge Luis Borges), 106,5 x 21,5 x 16 cm. Performance presented in 2008 at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK, unique piece
Eleven Instruments, Eleven Variations, Book Concerto in One Act: for 40 Penguins, 2018, custom bookshelf in ash, 40 books (Cahiers de Résidence of Fondation d’Entreprise Hermès), 29 x 41 x 22,5 cm. Performance presented in 2012 at the Magasin Hermès for the launch of the Cahiers de Résidence, Fondation d’Entreprise Hermès & Actes Sud, Paris, France, unique piece
Eleven Instruments, Eleven Variations, Book Concerto in One Act: for 17 Penguins, 2018, custom bookshelf in ash, 17 books (The Country of the Blind by H.G. Wells), 11 x 24 x 16,5 cm. Performance presented in 2009 at the 12th International Artist’s Book Fair, Leeds, UK, unique piece.
Photo © Aurélien Mole
Elisabeth S. Clark, Eleven Instruments, Eleven Variations, Book Concerto in One Act: for 75 Penguins, 2018, custom table-bookshelf in ash and steel, 75 books (Twitterature edition by Alexander Aciman & Emmett Rensin), 100 x 102 x 11 cm (table non removable). Performance presented in 2010 at Penguin Books’ Head Offices, London, UK, unique piece. Photo © Aurélien Mole
Elisabeth S. Clark, Eleven Instruments, Eleven Variations, Book Concerto in One Act: for 40 Penguins, 2018, custom bookshelf in ash, 40 books (Cahiers de Résidence of Fondation d’Entreprise Hermès), 29 x 41 x 22,5 cm. Performance presented in 2012 at the Magasin Hermès for the launch of the Cahiers de Résidence, Fondation d’Entreprise Hermès & Actes Sud, Paris, France, unique piece. Photo © Aurélien Mole
Elisabeth S. Clark, Eleven Instruments, Eleven Variations, Book Concerto in One Act: for 20 Penguins, 2018, custom bookshelf in ash, 20 books (Die Schulzeit von Freddy Karpf by Manfred Goldfish), 18 x 12 x 13 cm. Performance presented in 2012 at Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral, Bad Ems, Germany, unique piece. Photo © Aurélien Mole
Elisabeth S. Clark, Eleven Instruments, Eleven Variations, Book Concerto in One Act: for 17 Penguins, 2018, custom bookshelf in ash, 17 books (The Country of the Blind by H.G. Wells), 11 x 24 x 16,5 cm. Performance presented in 2009 at the 12th International Artist’s Book Fair, Leeds, UK, unique piece. Photo © Aurélien Mole
Elisabeth S. Clark, Eleven Instruments, Eleven Variations, Book Concerto in One Act: for 29 Penguins, 2018, custom table-bookshelf in ash and maple and steel, 29 books (A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf),
84 x 120 x 25 cm (table), 120 x 25 cm (bookshelf with removable feet). Performance presented in 2008 at R O O M Gallery, London, UK, unique piece. Photo © Aurélien Mole
Elisabeth S. Clark, Eleven Instruments, Eleven Variations, Book Concerto in One Act: for 212 Penguins, 2018, custom table-bookshelf in ash and steel, 8 books, 204 cardboard pages of black and white photocopies (Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings by Robert Smithson), 45 x 33 x 25 cm (table removable). Performance presented in 2017 at the London Contemporary Music Festival, Ambika P3, London, UK, unique piece. Photo © Aurélien Mole
Elisabeth S. Clark, Eleven Instruments, Eleven Variations, Book Concerto in One Act: for 106 Penguins, 2018, custom bookshelf in ash, 106 black and white photocopies (Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings by Robert Smithson), variable dimensions. Performance presented in 2017 at the London Contemporary Music Festival, Ambika P3, London, UK, unique piece. Photo © Aurélien Mole
Elisabeth S. Clark, Eleven Instruments, Eleven Variations, Book Concerto in One Act: for 18 Penguins, 2018, custom bookshelf in ash (and maple), 18 books (As the story was told by Samuel Beckett), variable dimensions. Performance presented in 2008 at UCL Library, London, UK, unique piece. Photo © Aurélien Mole
Elisabeth S. Clark, Eleven Instruments, Eleven Variations, Book Concerto in One Act: for 34 Penguins, 2018, custom table-bookshelf in ash and maple and steel, 34 books (La nuit juste avant les forêts by Bernard-Marie Koltès), 71 x 100 cm (table), bookshelf with non removable feet Performance presented in 2010 at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, unique piece. Photo © Aurélien Mole
Elisabeth S. Clark, Reading Machine (for Between Words), 2018, structure in beech wood (12 branched wooden hanging rack with rotating top), paper and drawings (music scores), 160 x 54 x 54 x 130 diameter cm (tall version), 100 x 54 x 54 x 130 diamter cm (small version), edition of 4,
serie of unique pieces (music score)
Conducting Conductors (Silent interpretations of a sonorous score), 2018, documentary video of a performance,
working document for the artist’s project, color, sound, 06’40’’. Photo © Aurélien Mole
Elisabeth S. Clark, Conducting Conductors (Silent interpretations of a sonorous score), 2018, documentary video of a performance, working document for the artist’s project, color, sound, 06’40’’.
Photo © Aurélien Mole
Elisabeth S. Clark, Reading Machine (for Between Words), 2018, structure in beech wood (12 branched wooden hanging rack with rotating top), paper and drawings (music scores), 160 x 54 x 54 x 130 diameter cm (tall version), 100 x 54 x 54 x 130 diamter cm (small version), edition of 4,
serie of unique pieces (music score)
Between Words, 2010-2013, unbound score – print on paper and artist’s and musician’s annotations in pencil
31 pages, 29.7 x 42 cm, unique oeuvre from performance at Site Gallery, Sheffield, UK (alongside the exhibition Sol LeWitt: Artist’s Books), 8 May 2010. Performed by the Edges Ensemble. Photo © Aurélien Mole
Elisabeth S. Clark, Conducting Conductors (Silent interpretations of a sonorous score), 2018, documentary video of a performance, working document for the artist’s project, color, sound, 06’40’’
Reading Machine (for Between Words), 2018, structure in beech wood (12 branched wooden hanging rack with rotating top), paper and drawings (music scores), 160 x 54 x 54 x 130 diameter cm (tall version), 100 x 54 x 54 x 130 diamter cm (small version), edition of 4, serie of unique pieces (music score). Photo © Aurélien Mole
Elisabeth S. Clark, My world, 2018, sand from 16 different locations/countries, binding agent, 55 x 55 x 2 cm (table) , variable dimensions (sphere), serie of unique pieces + 1 AP. Photo © Aurélien Mole
View form outside. Photo © Aurélien Mole
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