Gomringer at DMU

In September, Eugen Gomringer visited the UK as part of a celebratory tour of his life's work. As such, Gomringer spoke at the Royal Festival Hall in London, De Montfort University (DMU) in Leicester, the University of Derby, and Shandy Hall (home of 18th century author Laurence Sterne) in Yorkshire, amongst a few other places.

Born in 1925, Gomringer occupies an important place in the history of European art and poetry as the founder of the concrete poetry movement. His tour involved readings, talks, and exhibition openings.

The event at DMU exhibited works from the Conz collection, a selection of artworks donated to DMU by Italian art collector and avant-garde publisher Francecsco Conz. The donation, organised by Nicholas Zurbrugg, then Professor of English and Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Contemporary Arts at DMU, coincided with Eugen Gomringer's first visit to the University in 1996.

L to R: Francesco Conz, Eugen Gomringer, and Nicholas Zurbrugg

From the early 1970s, Conz began to work with experimental artists, such as key members of the Fluxus movement who were dedicated to exploring art in mixed media forms. Through his publishing company Editions Conz, he also produced large scale ink-on-canvas prints of concrete poetry, among which featured many of Gomringer's concrete poetry creations. Gomringer's works from the Conz donation have been exhibited in the Clephan building at DMU, home to the department of English and Creative Writing, and the Faculty of Art, Design, and Humanities.

The actual exhibition of large canvas prints is impressive. I've obviously seen and read about Gomringer's works in academic books and journal articles, but it really was a different experience to see them for real. There were four pieces which I particularly liked. The first two can be seen below.

L to R:

'memoires, memories, memorias' (1983)

'wind' (1953)

As with all his concrete-poetic works, Gomringer makes use of white space to explore the visual possibilities of the sign. 'wind' is rather self-explanatory, the scattered letters evoking a sense of dynamic motion, the letters themselves looking as though they have been blown by wind. 'memoires, memories, memorias' is somewhat more complicated. Gomringer writes the word 'memories' in French, English, and Spanish, arranging them to form a square, but with one side missing. In his talk, Gomringer mentioned this saying that he had deliberately left this absence, for another language, something else, perhaps beyond the sign.

Another of my favourites was 'kein fehler im system' (1969), shown below, which translates as 'no error in the system'.

The clever thing about 'kein fehler im system' is its playful performance of seeming error, amidst a clearly patterned system. With each repetition of the line, the 'f' from 'fehler' moves one position to the right, thus causing an error in terms of correct language use. However, at the same time, there is clearly a system, a code, which structures this concrete-poem. The code itself is exacted perfectly - there is no error in the system - evolving the text until it arrives full circle at 'kein fehler im system' after its series of permutations.

Finally, I can't not mention Gomringer's most famous piece, 'Silencio' (1954).

Again, Gomringer arranges language so that it performs. Here, the word 'silence' is arranged repeatedly in a rectangular shape. To look at, the block black repetition of 'silencio' appears visually noisy. And yet, in the centre, Gomringer leaves a perfect white space. A blank, which iconically depicts its meaning (and creates a synaesthetic mapping), the visual emptiness metaphorically performing sonic silence.

All in all, the Conz collection at DMU is remarkable. It adorns the walls of the second floor of the Clephan building, outside an undergraduate lecture theatre. Its presence there is understated, subtly imposing, and I do hope those who walk past it take note!

Altered Book Workshop

Last month, my friend Alice and I took ourselves along to an Altered Book Workshop, here in Sheffield hosted by the Creative Action Network. The idea behind the workshop was to explore the ways in which old or unwanted books can be transformed into art objects and sculptures. Anyone who reads this blog (and particularly has read the posts on the book-sculptures of  Isaac Salazar and Brian Dettmer) will know that I am interested in the material form of books and their creative potentialities. With this workshop just on the doorstep, it seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up! ...Time to get involved and have a go myself!

Charlie Hill, a Sheffield-based mixed media artist, was running the workshop and she began by showing us her own work in altered books as well as work by other altered book artists. Charlie introduced us to two artists in particular for inspiration.

The first was Su Blackwell (who incidentally is from Sheffield!). Her book-sculptures create intricate and complex scenes, often from the realms of a fairy tales and folklore. They really are beautiful delicate installation pieces - See for yourself:

Above: Top Left: 'The Extasie' (2006);

Bottom Left: 'The Baron in the Trees' (2011); Right: 'Hope' (2009)

What I wouldn't give to own one! ...and if you'd like to see more, there is a full gallery on her website.


The second artist was Nicholas Jones, an Australian sculpture. His work is much more about the the ways in which the pages of books can be folded or cut into in order to create new shapes and designs:

Above: Top Left, Bottom Left and Centre are taken from Jones'

'The Tower of Learning' exhibition at Pablo Fanque, Sydney, 2008;

Top right: 'The Blue Wave'; and Bottom Right comes from

'The Garden of Forking Paths' exhibition at Geelong Gallery, Victoria, 2009.

And if you'd like to see more of Nicholas Jones' work, he also has a gallery on his website.

Obviously, seeing these artists works, we had a lot to wonder at! Though I warn you now, this was a beginner's workshop, so don't expect to much! In the workshop, we learnt mostly about the different techniques for folding in order to create new shapes, revisioning the book as it were

This was my greatest achievement for the day, which I've decided to call 'leaves', playing on the pun of the pages themselves being leaves (homage to Mark Z. Danielewski, of course!):








And this is part of the process of folding, created by my friend Alice.







Dan Williamson was also at the workshop and he created three really good pieces, all of which can be seen on his lovely photo blog: 'This is not a refuge', 'donkey cabbages', and 'The Spring and the Egg'.

All in all, I really enjoyed the day. It made a nice change to be more creative!