The Postcard is a Public Work of Art

The Postcard is a Public Work of Art Exhibition of artists' postcards 23 January to 1 March 2014 Preview Thursday 23 January 2014, 6.30 - 8.30pm

Postcards by sixty artists based in Britain, the majority newly made for this exhibition. Curated and catalogued by Jeremy Cooper.

Åbäke, David Bellingham, John Bevis, George Blair, David Blamey, James Brooks, Lewis Chaplin, Ruth Claxton, Julie Cockburn, Patrick Coyle, Simon Cutts, Leo Davey, Tim Davies, Arnaud Desjardin, Karen Di Franco, Daniel Eatock, Ruth Ewan and Dan Griffiths, Jacky Fleming, Ryan Gander, Cristina Garrido, Paul Greenleaf, Mark Harfield, Gabriel Hartley, Juliet Haysom, Tony Hayward, Tim Head, Susan Hiller, Georgie Hopton, Dean Hughes, Juneau Projects, Peter Kennard and Cat Phillips, Alan Kitching, Sharon Kivland, Helen Knight, Michael Leigh, Rebecca Loweth, Sara MacKillop, Elizabeth Magill, Imi Maufe, Hansjörg Mayer, Elizabeth McAlpine, Ingrid Berthon-Moine, Jonathan Monk, Paul Morton, Andy Parker, Mark Pawson, Georgina Potier, Ruth Proctor, Frances Richardson, Robert Richardson, Molly Rooke, Colin Sackett, Sarah Staton, Holly Stevenson, Peter Sylveire, Erica Van Horn, Nick Wadley, Stuart Whipps, Anwyl Cooper-Willis, Duncan Wooldridge

The purpose of an artist's postcard is to express an idea, aesthetic and intellectual, specifically and exclusively in the form of a postcard, that could be actually postable, even when made of wood, or bone, or steel. The exhibits are not merely postcard-sized paintings, but instead they engage individually with the form and purpose of the postcard. The exhibition's title ‘The Postcard is a Public Work of Art’ is taken, with the approval of both artists, from a postcard of 1996 designed by Simon Cutts and printed by David Bellingham at his Glasgow imprint WAX366.

To accompany the exhibition X Marks the Bökshop produced a publication of a postcard catalogue, drawn from Hans Ulrich Obrist's breakaway catalogues Hotel Carlton Palace Chambre 763 in Paris in 1993 and Take Me (I'm Yours) at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 1995. This form was itself inspired by the work of Lucy Lippard in the 1970s. Our postcards-of-the-postcards are an extension of this idea.