Torpedo’s ten-year anniversary is the occasion for a series of gatherings, talks, conversations, presentations and book displays that takes place at Atelier Felix in Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo throughout 2016. These events will look at various aspects of contemporary publishing, including its recent revival within the art world.
The events consists of the One Year Art Book Fair–a monthly series of small curated publishers displays and a two-day public seminar How to raise a teenager. A publication reflecting these activities will be released in 2017.
This project is curated by Torpedo in collaboration with Corinn Gerber, Passenger Books (Montreal/Zürich), Benjamin Thorel, Section 7 Books/Paraguay Press (Paris), and Brian Kennon, 2nd Cannons Publications (Los Angeles).
Coming of Age
Torpedo's ONE YEAR ART BOOK FAIR
April - December, 2016
The OYABF is a unique project that extends Torpedo’s efforts to promote and distribute artists’ books and small-press publications. In a series of monthly events, artists and publishers are invited to display their books, posters, projects-in-process, artworks or other exhibition material which forms part of their production. The OYABF aims to emphasise specialization and individuality, and to create a situation in which visitors can explore a complete body of work in depth.
The selection of artists and publishing projects invited to OYABF have diverse strategies, interests and motivations. The art-book publisher can be an artist, a collective, a public art organisation, a small press, an art writer, an institution, a graphic designer, poet, critic or curator. Around 40 exhibitors have been invited and will be announced throughout the year. Each month’s curated exhibition will be activated by parallel events, talks, discussions and presentations.
HOW TO RAISE A TEENAGER
–a public seminar about art publication and distribution
April 22- 23, 2016
This seminar is a two-day gathering of local and international speakers who are active as publishers, editors, artists, writers, curators, graphic designers, or in some combination of these roles.
Speakers:
Cara Benedetto
is a New York City based artist and writer. She has exhibited internationally as well as nationally with Chapter NY; Night Gallery, LA; MOCA Cleveland; and Metro Pictures, NY. Her work has been reviewed in Gallerist NY, Art in America, The LA Art Book Review, and NYT Magazine. She has published with Qui Parle, CA; The Third Rail, MN; and experimental romance novels The Coming of Age, Stuttgart Academy of Art and Design, 2014; andBurning Blue, Badlands Inc., 2015. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Print Media at Virginia Commonwealth University.
David Bennewith
is a New Zealand-born graphic designer and design researcher based in Amsterdam. Under the name Colophon, he works on research and commissioned projects focused on type-design and typography. He has done extensive research into New Zealand type design, particularly the work of Joseph Churchward, publishing a monograph on him in 2009. Recent works include: Identity and graphic design for ‘Secret Power’, New Zealand’s entry to the 2015 Biennale d’Arte in Venice, identity and graphic design for Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory in Utrecht, and ‘Taught.’ an essay about graphic designer Karel Martens teaching career, printed in ‘reprint karel martens’ published by Roma Publications. Since 2015 Bennewith is the head of the graphic design department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam.
Jennie Hagevik Bringaker
graduated with an MFA in Studio Art from New York University Steinhardt in 2010 and a BFA in Scenography from The Norwegian Theatre Academy / Østfold University College, Fredrikstad in 2003. She works mainly with sculpture and performance as well as scenography and production design for theater and film. Her work has recently been exhibited at Kulturrådets 50th anniversary Conference at Harstad Kulturhus, Paris Internationale, presented by 1857, Hacienda, Zurich, Spring Break Art Show, NYC, The national Museum of Contemporary Art, Norway and The Sculpture Biennial 2013 at The Vigeland Museum.
Tor Erik Bøe
received his education from The Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art and Creative Writing. He works with performance and sculpture, and has been the curator of a series of performance programs like Følsomme gutter at Kurant, Tromsø, Reality at Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo and After School Special at Landmark, Bergen Kunsthall amongst others. He has recently exhibited his work at Grand Century, NYC, Kurant, Tromsø, Nebbet, Fredrikstad, Nord-Norsk Kunstforening, Harstad and Holodeck, Oslo.
Eller med a
is a graphic design studio, founded in 2011 by Lotte Grønneberg, Karen Grønneberg and Marte Meling Enoksen, based in Oslo and Copenhagen.
Eller med a works with producing, initiating and materializing projects within the art, design and literature field. Their main focus is on the book as a medium, and on the different aspects of a publishing process. In november 2014 they opened the independent bookshop -1, located at Den Frie Center for Contemporary Art in Copenhagen.
Chiara Figone
is one of the founding members of Archive Books. Archive is a
platform for cultural research and debate based in Berlin and Milano. It brings
together activists and cultural practitioners in an adaptable and non-hierarchal
structure with the aim to foster an unique space for discussion and exchange.
Archive is engaged in a wide range of activities including publishing and exhibition
making. Since 2008 she is Professor at NABA (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti) Milan.
Jan Freuchen
is an artist based in Kristiansand. Freuchen works with installations, collages, texts and curatorial projects. Along with Sigurd Tenningen he is responsible for the exhibition and publication series Game of Life at Kristiansand Kunsthall. Recent exhibitions includes MAKE DEFAULT at HKS, Bergen (2016) and Close, but no Cigar, at Meat & Marble, Havana (2016). Columna Transatlantica, a sculpture project organised by the National Tourist Routes situated by the Atlantic Road on the Norwegian west coast, is due to open this summer.
Corinn Gerber
is an editor and publisher, co-founder of Passenger Books, recent Director of Art Metropole (Toronto), former Head of Distribution at Koenig publishers (Cologne), amongst others. She is currently continuing her research at Concordia University (Montréal). Passenger Books came into being on a ship on the Bosporus on New year’s Eve 2004/05. It takes the word Verlegen (publishing) to mean a displacing, a shifting of something from one place to another, as well as a multiplying.
Frances Horn
is Initially trained as a photographer. She now assists the artist book world thru the guise as editor of MER. Paper Kunsthalle, a not for profit imprint of Luc Derycke studio, based in Gent Belgium. She has been working with numerous art institutions, galleries, record labels, and cultural organisations since 1992 in the UK, Europe, the US and Mexico and finds the task of artist book distribution via viable platforms to be her main motivation. In 2009 she initiated the fair PA/PER VIEW at WIELS which saw 11 successful editions including several satellite fairs in Europe and Mexico, and now co-founded and collaborates with INDEX art book fair, which has had 2 recent editions in Museo Zapopan in Guadalajara and Museo Jumex in Mexico City. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
Benjamin Alexander Huseby
is a Norwegian artist living in Berlin, working with botany and nature through photography, food and landscape planning. He is interested in plants normally considered weeds, how we divide plants and nature into concepts of "wild", "native" and "alien", and the practical, edible and medicinal uses of plants. He published the book "Weeds & Aliens - an unnatural history of plants” with Torpedo Press in 2015, a five year study of plants that grow between his home and studio. He has exhibited at Whitechapel, KW, The ICA, Artist Space, Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Kunsthall Oslo. Huseby is also a prolific photographer working for magazines like The Gentlewoman, Dazed, AnOther Magazine, Fantastic Man, Vogue etc. and self published several artist books.
Brian Kennon
is an artist and publisher. His work has been exhibited widely in the United States and Europe. He is the founder of 2nd Cannons Publications, a publishing project focusing on artists’ books. 2nd Cannons has also organized exhibition spaces and temporary bookshops. To date, as 2nd Cannons and through his own self-publishing practice, Brian has published approximately 40 titles. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
Louise O’Hare
co-runs the organisation Three Letter Words, which is currently working to develop a new user-generated resource and platform for art publishers. Other on-going projects include Sonrisa, a bilingual magazine of new work based in Havana and London, and SMILE her practice-based PhD at Northumbria University (Studentship Award 2014–17). In 2011 she founded the London Bookshop Map, a platform for disseminating work by artists who have included Dora García, Katrina Palmer and Hannah Rickards among others.
Kate Phillmore
is an independent curator with a background in art publishing both on a small independent scale and for larger museum publishers. She worked with the Whitstable Biennale, a contemporary film and performance festival on the Kent coast, from 2009-2014 as Assistant Curator and has recently joined the team at Flat Time House in London, which is dedicated to the legacy of the artist John Latham. Kate was one of the organizers of Publish and Be Damned for five years, before starting Three Letter Words with Louise O’Hare. They are currently developing a digital platform that will support independent art publishers and bookshops internationally.
Sigurd Tenningen
is a writer and critic based in Kristiansand. Along with Jan Freuchen he is responsible for the exhibition and publication series Game of Life at Kristiansand Kunsthall. His latest publication is a collection of essays entitled Vegetasjonens triumf er total (Gyldendal, 2015) and a Norwegian translation of Peter Sloterdijk’s Rules for the Human Zoo (Lord Jim Publishing, 2016).
Benjamin Thorel
is an art critic, editor and curator. He’s co-running Section 7 Books, a bookstore in Paris focusing on independent publishing, and is part of the team of Paraguay Press – both structures were formerly departments of castillo/corrales, a collectively-run alternative art space that closed in 2015. In 2012 he completed MA research on editorial practices by contemporary artists at the EHESS, Paris, aiming at rethinking the vocabulary and methods of analysis of publishing in the art context.
This project is presented in collaboration with Kunstnernes Hus and is supported by The Arts Council Norway, Fritt Ord, the City of Oslo and Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.
