Join us for the launch of the brand new publication Melissa Gordon – Vital Signs (2023)! Beforehand, six artists – invited by Melissa Gordon – offer an insight into how text and linguistics play a role within their practice.
Sunday, November 5, 2023
2pm
Angie Keefer, Natasha Soobramanien, Chris Evans (Sudden Wealth), Henry Andersen & Sabrina Seifried
Presentations, performances and readings on voice
3:30pm
Melissa Gordon: Vital Signs
Book launch and panel discussion
Vital Signs brings together writings by artist Melissa Gordon, which she has performed live over the past decade in various contexts. Focusing on the role and behaviour of gesture in her painting practice and that of others, Gordon’s texts move between topics of dropping out, (female) genius, con jobs, how one ‘speaks’ in painting, and notions of ‘suckcess’.
Gordons’ writing emerges from a history of feminist organising and editing. Vital Signs shows the development from editor to writer to stand-up performer, and the shuffling and re-combination of the texts with each performative iteration.
The selected pieces – most published here for the first time – are accompanied by full-page details of Gordon’s body of paintings titled Female Readymades, where inventories of objects, texts, letters, and gestures hang on fences and walls inside larger architectural installations.
The publication is a collaboration between the Frans Masereel Centrum and Occasional Papers, with a contribution by Páḋraic E. Moore and designed by Sara De Bondt.
Images: ‘Female Readymades’ as part of the group exhibition ‘The Story of M.B. as told by Jef Geys‘ in the Frans Masereel Centrum in 2021.
Female Readymade (Letter to Laurie Parsons, fence, weeds, badge, broken heart keychain, sleeve, jeans and dollars, Attie’s painting, waste bin and pom pom), 2021
Acrylic, silkscreen, flache on canvas, 180 x 200 cm
Female Readymade (Drop Outs, Letter to Dr.Brunn, chain, dollar bill in homage to Laurie Parsons, Lee Lozano’s Notebook, ratchet, list of verbs of gestures of dropping out, large wash, sleeve, medicine, painting), 2020
Acrylic, silkscreen, flache, marble dust, dollar bill on canvas, 180 x 200 cm
Female Readymade (Weeds, Correspondence with Marina and Kaisa on LABOUR (2011), Letters with Eva on Genius (2014), Note to Angie on Confidence (2015), Rope, Excerpt from Drop Outs: Slackers, Sociopaths, Social Workers (2013), Cut-out of ‘On Friendship’ by Celine Condorelli, PERSONA, ferns, ‘Whats the hook?’ painting for Rita), 2021
Courtesy: Melissa Gordon
Join us for the launch of the brand new publication Melissa Gordon – Vital Signs (2023)! Beforehand, six artists – invited by Melissa Gordon – offer an insight into how text and linguistics play a role within their practice.
Sunday, November 5, 2023
2pm
Angie Keefer, Natasha Soobramanien, Chris Evans (Sudden Wealth), Henry Andersen & Sabrina Seifried
Presentations, performances and readings on voice
3:30pm
Melissa Gordon: Vital Signs
Book launch and panel discussion
Vital Signs brings together writings by artist Melissa Gordon, which she has performed live over the past decade in various contexts. Focusing on the role and behaviour of gesture in her painting practice and that of others, Gordon’s texts move between topics of dropping out, (female) genius, con jobs, how one ‘speaks’ in painting, and notions of ‘suckcess’.
Gordons’ writing emerges from a history of feminist organising and editing. Vital Signs shows the development from editor to writer to stand-up performer, and the shuffling and re-combination of the texts with each performative iteration.
The selected pieces – most published here for the first time – are accompanied by full-page details of Gordon’s body of paintings titled Female Readymades, where inventories of objects, texts, letters, and gestures hang on fences and walls inside larger architectural installations.
The publication is a collaboration between the Frans Masereel Centrum and Occasional Papers, with a contribution by Páḋraic E. Moore and designed by Sara De Bondt.
Images: ‘Female Readymades’ as part of the group exhibition ‘The Story of M.B. as told by Jef Geys‘ in the Frans Masereel Centrum in 2021.
Female Readymade (Letter to Laurie Parsons, fence, weeds, badge, broken heart keychain, sleeve, jeans and dollars, Attie’s painting, waste bin and pom pom), 2021
Acrylic, silkscreen, flache on canvas, 180 x 200 cm
Female Readymade (Drop Outs, Letter to Dr.Brunn, chain, dollar bill in homage to Laurie Parsons, Lee Lozano’s Notebook, ratchet, list of verbs of gestures of dropping out, large wash, sleeve, medicine, painting), 2020
Acrylic, silkscreen, flache, marble dust, dollar bill on canvas, 180 x 200 cm
Female Readymade (Weeds, Correspondence with Marina and Kaisa on LABOUR (2011), Letters with Eva on Genius (2014), Note to Angie on Confidence (2015), Rope, Excerpt from Drop Outs: Slackers, Sociopaths, Social Workers (2013), Cut-out of ‘On Friendship’ by Celine Condorelli, PERSONA, ferns, ‘Whats the hook?’ painting for Rita), 2021
Courtesy: Melissa Gordon
