TONE TOLD TEXT, 2022
Issue 3 TEXT coming in 2023
Issue 2 TOLD launched October, 2022
Issue 1 TONE launched July, 2022
TONE, TOLD, and TEXT by SMALL NIGH PROJECTS are screen-printed art publications dedicated to text art, what we call a lowercase journal. It is edited by James Merrigan, Laura Fitzgerald & Alan Phelan. TONE is the first of three issues to be launched at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios on June 8th at 6pm, followed by issues 2 & 3 launched at The Royal Hibernian Academy & the Douglas Hyde Gallery in the Winter of 2023. It is screen-printed by Small Night Projects, in a garage, in Waterford City. It will change name with each issue – the second being TOLD and the third being TEXT. At 40x34cm it’s close to A3 in size with a page count of 53.
Text is prevalent in our visual economy, especially in the proliferation of memes on social media. However the three co-editors of TONE, two of whom are contributing artists Laura Fitzgerald & Alan Phelan, have invited contributions wherein text stands alone without the crutch of the image. This is what editor James Merrigan calls TEXT AS IMAGE.
Launch of TONE at TBG+S 8 July 2022, 6pm
In what contributing LA artist Mark Verabioff called “the first wave”, we have researched far & wide for artists who prioritise text in their art as a standalone thing, divorced from the visual, but intimating a imaginary space that brings images & emotions to bear on the reading of them. Our hope is the reader will experience the chiastic structure of text as experience & experience as text.
The texts come in a variety of forms, from typed to handwritten, repetitive to rhetorical. What brings all six contributors together is what is intrinsic to words detached from their grammatical system: vulnerability. In this vulnerable & disjointed lexical space, artists tease out images & emotions through the silent saying of things without a pictorial representation to bridge the gap or rupture. Things said can never be unsaid. Is this the artist saying the words, society, or a verbal echo of you, the reader?
We invite you to come find out more on July 8th, 6pm, at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios Dublin, where a launch & introductory discussion to the project will take place with the co-editors. We will discuss the project in light of its local context & the international artists who have generously acknowledged our conceptual & critical aims by accepting our invitation. The TONE artists are: Laura Fitzgerald, Alan Phelan, Jack Pierson, Laure Prouvost, Mark Verabioff, Isobel Wohl.
The first issue TONE will be for sale at the launch night. It will NOT be available online as a pdf, or by post, but will be distributed only in-person. 50 copies will be available on the launch night at €20 each, strictly one copy per person. Cash only.
Funded by The Arts Council of Ireland and Dublin City Council
CONTACTS: Small Night Projects – James Merrigan
email: smallnightzine@gmail.com
web: https://smallnight.org/
socials: https://www.instagram.com/smallnightprojects/
Welcome All to the launch of TOLD at RHA Dublin, on Wednesday October 5th, 2022 from 6.30pm
TOLD is the second in a series of screen-printed art publications dedicated to text art, what we call a lowercase journal.
Although text is the thing we are concerned with most, TOLD is an object that contains no real narrative — beginning, middle, or end. Like all sequels, TOLD acts as a corrective to the original issue, TONE, with the hope of retaining the spirit, energy & risk of the “first wave” original (repeating first-wave contributor Mark Verabioff’s phrase).
What has been retained from the original is the front cover, which is still inked up with a slab of text that badly describes TOLD in the very same words that described the first issue TONE. The only difference is the colour red, which, in contrast to the black cover of the first issue, could infer the red pen of correction, which, in the season of the return to school, is perhaps appropriate, especially with a title like TOLD.
What is new is the 6 invited artists bound together in the issue: FIONA BANNER, GARDAR EIDE EINARSSON, CLAIRE FONTAINE, JAKI IRVINE, DARRAN MCGLYNN, WALKER & WALKER. They are artists, individual & in collaborative pairs, that we respect and hero worship a little.
We have tried to distill what the artists do in 8-page signatures, that broadly speaking, transcend the socio-political gamut, from death to shattered love, from inscribed body to meta language.
It’s a colourful issue in terms of content & form. Red is the primary note. As the bad joke goes: What is black, white & red all over? And yet we have also embraced colour & the layering of colours in the issue, pushing the limitations of our DIY setup.
The second issue TOLD (& a limited number of first issue TONEs) will be for sale at the launch night. It will NOT be available online as a pdf, or by post, but will be distributed only in-person. 50 copies will be available on the launch night at €20 each, strictly one copy per person. Cash only.
Hopefully see & chat with you there & then
James, Laura, Alan
Thank you to the @artscouncilireland & @dublincitycouncil for their support, & @rhagallery for hosting event.
