Kendell Geers features in 'Holy, Holy, Holy: an exhibition of books with holes'
No Show Space presents 'Holy, Holy, Holy: an exhibition of books with holes', curated by Inscription Journal with Fraser Muggeridge and Aslak Gurholt. This exhibition celebrates the launch of new journal 'Inscription: the Journal of Material Text', coinciding with Frieze London and featuring Kendell Geers as artist in residence for ‘Inscription #2’.
Allen Ginsberg wrote in ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ (1955): ‘The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy!... Everything is holy!’ Books, too, can be surprisingly hol(e)y. Their holes are often not aberrations or quirks so much as integral features. The material text has historically been riddled with them: needle holes made in order to stitch pages together; or tunnels made by bookworms and other pests; or pinpricks added by medieval scribes to mark out the layout of a manuscript page; or, in parchment works, large irregular gaps as a result of flaws in the animal hide.
'Holy, Holy, Holy' presents a varied and international library of 20th and 21st century books including Kendell Geers’ 'Point Blank' (2004), an edition of 1,030 blank books with each copy shot at point blank range. Also on display is Katsumi Komagata’s ‘What color?’ (1991); Peter Newell’s ‘The HOLE Book’ (1908); Scott Blake’s ‘Hole Punch Flipbook #1’ (2020); Lucio Fontana’s perforated covers and Dieter Roth’s iconic die-cut volumes. The presentation also includes works by Carolyn Thompson and David Bellingham, alongside a special preview of 'Inscription #2'.
