TOLD
Launch > RHA Dublin, 5 October 2022, 6.30pm
TOLD is the second in a series of screen-printed art publications dedicated to text art, what we call a lowercase journal. It is edited by James Merrigan, Laura Fitzgerald & Alan Phelan.
TOLD is screen-printed by Small Night Projects, in a garage, in Waterford City. At 40x34cms, it is close to A3 in size with a page count of 52. It is the second of three issues: the first issue TONE was launched at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios on July 8th; the third issue TEXT will be launched at the Douglas Hyde Gallery in the Winter of 2022; & the current issue TOLD will be launched at the RHA Dublin on Wednesday, October 5th, 2022, at 6.30pm.
Although text is the thing we are concerned with most, TOLD is an object that contains no real narrative — beginning, middle, or end. Like all sequels, TOLD acts as a corrective to the original issue, TONE, with the hope of retaining the spirit, energy & risk of the “first wave” original (repeating first-wave contributor Mark Verabioff’s phrase).
What has been retained from the original is the front cover, which is still inked up with a slab of text that badly describes TOLD in the very same words that described the first issue TONE. The only difference is the colour red, which, in contrast to the black cover of the first issue, could infer the red pen of correction, which, in the season of the return to school, is perhaps appropriate, especially with a title like TOLD.
What is new is the six invited artists bound together in the issue: FIONA BANNER, GARDAR EIDE EINARSSON, CLAIRE FONTAINE, JAKI IRVINE, DARRAN MCGLYNN, WALKER & WALKER. They are artists, individual and in collaborative pairs, that we respect and hero worship a little.
We have tried to distill what the artists do in 8-page signatures, that broadly speaking, transcend the socio-political gamut, from death to shattered love, from inscribed body to meta language.
It’s a colourful issue in terms of content & form. Red is the primary note. As the bad joke goes: What is black, white & red all over? And yet we have also embraced colour & the layering of colours in the issue, pushing the limitations of our DIY setup.
Text is prevalent in our visual economy, especially in the proliferation of memes on social media. This is what co-editor James Merrigan calls TEXT AS IMAGE. We have researched far & wide for artists who prioritise text in their art as a standalone thing, divorced, or complicit, with the seductive image, but intimating an imaginary space that brings images & emotions to bear on the reading of them. Our hope is the reader will experience the chiastic structure of text as experience & experience as text.
The texts come in a variety of forms, from typed to handwritten, repetitive to rhetorical. What brings all six contributors together, is what is intrinsic to words detached from their grammatical system: vulnerability. In this vulnerable & disjointed lexical space, artists tease out images & emotions through the silent saying of things without a pictorial representation to bridge the gap or rupture. Things said can never be unsaid. Is this the artist saying the words, society, or a verbal echo of you, the reader?
We invite you to come find out more on October 5th, 6.30pm, at RHA Dublin, where a launch will take place with the co-editors and some of the contributing artists.
The second issue TOLD (and a limited number of first issue TONEs) will be for sale at the launch night. It will NOT be available online as a pdf, or by post, but will be distributed only in-person. 50 copies will be available on the launch night at €20 each, strictly one copy per person. Cash only.
Funded by The Arts Council of Ireland and Dublin City Council
CONTACTS:
Small Night Projects - James Merrigan
email: smallnightzine@gmail.com
web: https://smallnight.org/ socials: https://www.instagram.com/smallnightprojects/