January 2011 – Paris Correspondence School
a postcard exchange project, touring to Minnie Weisz Studio in February
Darren Banks, Ana Benlloch, Tom Butler, Martyn Cross, Vicky Cull, Anna Francis, Jo Gane, Caitlin Griffiths, Gabo Guzzo, Elizabeth Hingley and Tomonaga Tokuyama, Lulu Horsfield, Calum F Kerr, Hayley Lock, Kira O’Reilly, Samantha Voong and Emmett Walsh
Preview 21st Jan 6-8pm
21st – 28th January 2011 by appointment
Paris Correspondence School is a project initiated by TROVE Director, Charlie Levine, and realised during August 2010. After reading Walter Benjamin’s Archive edited by Ursula Marx, Gudrun Schwarz, Michael Schwarz and Erdmut Wizisla; translated by Esther Leslie, Levine was thinking about how to document her time in Paris over the Summer 2010. Inspired by Benjamin, Levine decided to send postcards home instead of keeping a diary. These postcards, as Benjamin did, would be sent to friends and family and then returned to her upon her return. However, as this idea and project developed Levine instead commissioned 17 artists to design a postcard. These were then printed and packs of the final 16 postcards distributed to all the artists involved with each other’s addresses. During the month of August a postcard exchange project took place. Cards were altered, added to, written upon and cut up and sent around the world.
The project, Paris Correspondence School, takes its name from pioneer and father of postal art, Ray Johnson’s New York Corespondance [sic] School. He is documented as the first to take the idea of postal art and make it into the main theme of his practice. Beginning in the 1950s he continued to be the face of postal art till his death in 1995, he set up New York Corespondance School in 1962 by writing ‘please send to’ on the back of small collages, drawings, instructions, newspaper clippings and anything else that could be posted. With this in mind the artists of Paris Correspondence School took up the mantel set by Johnson and have since sent a mass variety of new postcard works to one another.
Upon Levine’s return from Paris in September 2010 all of the artists forwarded their collection of postcards to her. Not all had gotten through the post, some lost in the system, some discarded by wrongly written address recipients, but here on display at Paris Correspondence School is the collection that made its way round the world and back to the UK.
Paris Correspondence School is touring to Minnie Weisz Studio, London opening on 6th Feb at 5-8pm.
See www.minnieweiszstudio.co.uk for further details.
1 Comment
Hello, I find it fascinating you named the project after Ray Johnson’s network. Before I left New York for Paris in 1992, Ray Johnson said to me, “Matthew, you should start The Paris Correspondence School.” I did.
In 2009, I launched a project in paying homage to Ray Johnson: A BOOK ABOUT DEATH. This took place at the Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery on 537 Broadway.
See: http://abookaboutdeath.blogspot.com/ and http://abookaboutdeatharchive.blogspot.com/
We’ve since had 20 exhibitions around the world re-staging and re-making this exhibition.
You should dig up the history of TNYCS… Call Clive Phillpot.
Best,
Matthew Rose