What the f*#k happens in Leytonstone?
Nothing.
That’s what happens here. It’s way past the back of beyond. It sits on the edge of the old London Orbital and the only thing that connects it to anything is an ancient forest called Epping. Many a failing conversation on Leytonstone has been saved just by mentioning ‘Epping Forest’.
About two years ago, strolling along the high street minding my own business, I decided to visit the SCT charity shop to see if there was anything of interest.
Charity shops based this far out of the capital tend to be thin on the ground at the best of times but old habits die hard and I was feeling optimistic.
After five or ten minutes of fruitless rummaging I was about to call it a day when a thin white book spine caught my eye. Lawrence Weiner: Turning Some Pages, with a small publication logo at the bottom reading Greencoat.
I stood holding the book in my hands for a few seconds thinking this was a pretty good but also pondering why a book by Lawrence Weiner had found its way into this charity shop on the edge of nowhere?
For those unfamiliar with his work, he’s probably one of the most important American conceptual artists living today. The pieces are mainly typographic but often referred to as sculptural. Bold statements, set in Franklin Gothic Condensed, float on walls. There’s often a perplexed feeling as you read/experience the work. That’s what helps give it a very brutal modernist edge.
The perfect price …
As I suspected, this little gem apparently meant nothing to anybody in the shop; £2 was scribbled in pencil, top right hand corner of the first page. Bingo. I was starting to feel giddy in a way that was probably similar to one of the American prospectors who’d just found a substantial piece of gold in his muddy water tray. But what was this? On the following page someone had scribbled their name in black ink on the top left corner behind the pencilled price tag. God, why do people do this! It ruins a perfectly neat book. Bloody hell, I was thinking, let me see what it says ... I spelt out the almost un-decipherable letters. L a w r e n c e W e i n e r ... stillness for a moment ... I repeated ... L a w r e n c e W e i n e r. This book had been signed by the artist! Time crunched into a moment of nothingness, a zen priest would have been proud of this highly focused moment. I’m in a charity shop on the edge of nowhere, holding a book by one of the biggest conceptual artists living today and it’s been signed by the artist himself. The only thing better than this would be to find an edition of Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Green Box) under an old bag of knitting wool. Deep breaths, stay calm.
… is that who I think it is?
I gathered my thoughts, to be fair there weren’t many, and kept repeating to myself: buy the book, buy the book ... my only worry was. If I’d suddenly blurted out: “I’ve just found a conceptual art book signed by the artist!” I ran the risk of some dude running out of the back room and rugby tackling me down to the ground and relieving me of my precious find.
I casually walked up to the pay point, placed the book on the counter and paid my £2, all with an emotionally crisp air of neutrality. There wasn’t even any faffing around with requests for old Aldi carrier bags, I always carry my own.
Stepping out into the bright sunshine I had to turn for some relief to the local coffee shop. Job done, the book was in my possession.
What the f*#k happens in Leytonstone? Nothing, that’s what happens here. It’s way past the back of beyond. I still stand by those words. But every now and then, just when you least expect it, a small chink of light breaks through.
Vive la conceptualism
Vive la charity shops
Vive le Document
Epilogue
So after the heady rush of finding the signed Lawrence Weiner book I feel obliged to describe it to you:
The man himself …
It’s a plain white gloss, semi-hardback/paperback edition. The title reads Turning Some Pages set in uppercase Franklin Gothic at an array projecting from the lower left corner of the cover rectangle. A curved red arrow graphic points to the top right corner. In the lower right corner is the Greencoat logo and on the reverse is £15.00 set in bland serif font in the lower left corner.
The book Itself is a kind of mashup. An art book meets a graphic book meets a paper stock sample book. There are several sections defined by different paper stocks starting with gloss, then velvet, then offset and finishing with extra matt. I think the printer is Greencoat and the publisher is Howard Smith Paper. There is a brief essay and interview with Lawrence Weiner by Adrian Shaughnessy at the start of the book.
… nice weight and size …
The frontispiece page has a small white box with the following text: Lecture 4, Lawrence Weiner Turning some pages. The next page has a similar box with: This journal belongs to set in it.
The rest of the book is given over to Weiner’s typographical work broken up by some photographic intervals and graphic representations of dice.
After each paper stock section a whole page is given over to describing the technical paper properties and sheet size specifications.
Some internet research into the book revealed that it was made in conjunction with a film by the artist, this is from the Electronic arts intermix website:
… very deep
Turning Some Pages was produced in conjunction with the printing of a limited edition journal of the same name by the Howard Smith Paper Group, a British paper merchant. The action of reading a book informs the structure of this motion drawing. Abstract arrangements of shapes and images of dice are interspersed with cryptic aphorisms ("With the addition of explicit meaning, the implicit sense of the throw of the dice becomes clear"); arrows suggest the turning of a page. Weiner adds another layer of complexity and enigma by repurposing his droll 1981 audio work Where It Came From as a soundtrack. Accompanied by Roma Baran on the piano, Weiner matter-of-factly explains: "Art is not a metaphor upon the relationship of human beings to objects and objects to objects in relation to human beings, but a representation of an empirical existing fact."
Source: EAI
