Seth Price - Business Envelopes, Gifts, Twine

Seth Price - Business Envelopes, Gifts, Twine

2008 - present

Seth Price's work spans text, video, sculpture and sound. He has become internationally known for his conceptual works revolving around ideas of appropriation, and the circulation of materials and information around the world.

'Business Envelopes, Gifts, Twine' are a series of images of envelopes or packages wrapped up with twine printed onto protective 'safety' film mounted on reflective acrylic sheets.  Price's work engages with strategies of recirculation, packaging and dispersion to make us consider issues of material and cultural production. As the 'Business Envelopes, Gifts, Twine'  works are displayed their printed surface slowly peals off. Only 'opening' after the exhibition has hosted its Private View the work begins to corrupt itself presumably hinting at the inevitable detritus of commodity culture.

Alighiero Boetti - Dossier Postale

Alighiero Boetti Dossier Postale (Postal Dossier)

1969–70

Alighiero Boetti began making postal works in 1969, marking a departure from his previous involvement with the Atre Povera movement and showing a new interest in systems and chance operations.

For Viaggi Postali (Postal Voyages) 25 friends, co-workers or family members were selected. The artist sent envelopes addressed to his 'travellers', knowing they would be returned as undeliverable. Boetti photocopied the returned mail, placed it into a new envelope and sent it on its next journey. These photocopies were gathered together and systematically ordered in the Dossier Postale (Postal Dossier). 

Imaginary journeys were drawn up for his addressees; Boetti would send the gallerist Leo Castelli on a tour or Morocco's grandest hotels, his colleague, the artist Giulio Paolini, would be sent to every address Boetti had ever lived in. Other 'recipients' included Marcel Duchamp, Bruce Nauman, Lucy Lippard and Seth Siegelaub.

 Each envelope contains the entire journey, though it is invisible to the viewer. 19 of the original 25 'journeys' were completed, with 6 not returned.

Eugenio Dittborn - To Return (RTM) Airmail Painting

Eugenio Dittborn, To Return (RTM) Airmail Painting No. 103, 1993


Born in Chile in 1943, Dittborn based much of his work on the critical examination of the marginal position of his home country in relation to wider international developments.

He adopted photography as a means to document his surroundings and combined this with excerpts found in books and newspapers. The paintings are made using traditional craft based skills such as stitching and screen printing onto thin folded sections of cheap non-woven fabric. Since their production in the early 80's, the Airmail Paintings have constantly been on the move;  the large panels are neatly folded into cardboard envelopes and are sent by post to the gallery they will be shown in. 

"These itinerant artworks collect meanings like souvenirs, as they journey from place to place, across borders, over time. Made, in part, in response to Santiago's place at the periphery of the international art scene and partly to circumvent the oppressive and regimented structures of Chile's military government, (as well as to reflect previous periods of colonization and repression) these mobile visual messages are free to go anywhere and initiate an evolving dialogue with their global audience." 



"The Airmail Paintings were conceived for at least two specific sites; that of the sender and that of the receiver, as well as for breaking/producing the distance between the two." Eugenio Dittborn.




Eugenio Dittborn, To Travel (RTM) Airmail Painting No. 76, 1990

Janek Schaefer - Recorded Delivery

Janek Schaefer Recorded Delivery 
1995

In 1995 Janek Schaefer packaged up a voice activated Dictaphone and posted it to the venue of  the group show 'Self Storage', organised by Art Angel, curated by Brian Eno and Laurie Anderson. The resulting work is a recording of loudest (or 'most sonically interesting') 72 minutes of the parcel's 15 hour journey to Acorn Self-Storage in Wembley. Predominantly comprised of the incidental clatters, rustles and bangs of a parcel passing through the postal system, the piece is interspersed with snippets of music and conversation, plus some bawdy back-room banter from some postal workers. The work is a succinct  self-contained document of its own creation; a composition set into motion by the artist's act of defining its parameters.