Sarah Bodman: For UWE Bristol’s Postgraduate Symposium Proof! 2024, I made a short video presentation inviting students, staff and interested parties to join me in making small artworks for an exhibition EXERCISES FOR ALL at Bower Ashton Library, UWE Bristol this September. This was in response to Kurt Johannessen’s artist’s book Exercises and its subsequent iterations.
Tanya Peixoto introduced me to Kurt Johannessen’s artists’ books at bookartbookshop in London in 2002. Much of his work is instructional and I have used his seminal book EXERCISES many times as inspiration for my own work.
In 2010 I produced An Exercise for Kurt Johannessen in response to one of his exercises: ‘write 100 stories and bury them in a forest’, which I did. The titles of the 100 short stories I wrote and buried for my exercise were taken up in 2011 by BookArtObject an international book arts group founded by artist Sara Bowen. 100 artists each made a book in response to one of my short story titles, and these were completed and exhibited in 2012.
For the 10th anniversary of bookartbookshop in 2012, celebrations were based on theme of: x or what is to be done? I asked Kurt Johannessen if I could select a further 10 (x) exercises from his artist’s book to carry out. The result was X Exercises for Kurt Johannessen published as a free download, DIY self-assembly book on 21.02.2012. The exercises can be identified through reading the texts in Kurt Johannessen’s Exercises. Today I am still learning through Exercises, and Kurt Johannessen has produced more editions in the series that you can see on his website at: http://www.zeth.no
Contributors were invited to dip into one of Kurt’s Exercises and make a small creative response to it. We are exhibiting all the works here in the library September – October 2024.
Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
