Poison America: Sharon Gilbert Bookworks
June 4 - September 27, 2007
Guest Curator Courtney J. Martin
Born in 1944, Sharon Gilbert engaged with many of the most pressing
social and cultural currents of her time. As a child of both the Cold
War and the civic upheavals of the 1960s in America, she used the
medium of artists' books to tackle national anxieties ranging from
nuclear waste to sexism to the American workday. Often executed with
textual wit and visual puns, her production engaged a variety of
aesthetic strategies, most notably, repetition and collage. Gilbert's
frequent use of the photo-copy machine was both innovative and
effective, a demonstration of her interest in mechanization and her
skill in moving between forms of graphic media. Poison America, a
title taken from one her works, presents a selection of her books
from the late 1970s to the present. Included with Gilbert's artists'
books are other artists' books that are in aesthetic, media, or
contextual dialogue with hers. These include her contemporary Dona
Ann McAdams, her colleague in the political art collective, Political
Art Documentation & Distribution Archive (PAD/D), and other copy-art
artists Mariona Barkus, Louise Neaderland, and John Wood. In addition
to the bookworks on display, the exhibition features an essay by
Martin, available on our web site:
http://www.library.yale.edu/aob/SharonGilbert/PoisonAmericaExhibitEssay.html
Courtney J. Martin is an art historian and a curator. Most recently,
she curated an exhibition of artists' books, the C-Series: Artists'
Books and Collective Action, in New York at the Nathan Cummings
Foundation. The C-Series traveled to the Baltic Centre for
Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England (2005); Neon Campobase in Milan,
Italy (2006); and the Liverpool Biennial (2006). In 2004, she
co-curated, an exhibition of abstract art, Sunrise/Sunset at Smack
Mellon in Brooklyn, New York. Currently, she is completing a
doctorate on late twentieth century British art at Yale University.
Prior to her arrival at Yale, she was the Interim Head Curator at the
Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum and worked in the media, arts, and
culture unit of the Ford Foundation in New York. She has written for
several publications, including Artforum, Flashart, Frieze, and NKA.
Please join us for a lecture by the guest curator in mid-September
2007. Details will be posted on our web site as soon as the date and
time are confirmed.
Jae Jennifer Rossman
Special Collections Librarian, Arts Library
Yale University Library
PO Box 208240
New Haven CT 06520-8240 USA
(203) 432-1712
(203) 432-0549 (fax)
http://www.library.yale.edu/art/
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