Art Metropole

#06100

Notes on Location

Artist

Peter Downsborough

Date

1972

Publisher

Zédélé Éditions

Format

Artists' Books

ISBN

978-2-915859-40-9

Size

13 × 20.5 × 0.5 cm

Length

44 

This book, which has become very rare, is the first of more than ninety artist’s books to date. This book is the matrix of those that will follow.

“In 1968-69, I was keeping some notes, on location. A year or so later, I was talking with Frederick Ted Castle and Leandro Katz, who were publishing under the name TVRT (The Vanishing Rotating Triangle). They wanted to see those notes and asked if they could publish them! I responded okay let’s. Hence Notes on Location followed shortly thereafter by Notes on Location II… There are more notes in the drawer.” — Peter Downsbrough, March 28, 2012

While this first publication was in some ways fortuitous and as Peter Downsbrough himself notes, the early 1970s were a propitious time for books, it nevertheless coincided with a key moment in the œuvre of the young sculptor, whose work focuses on location and orientation in space. Dissatisfied with the large works in steel he had hitherto produced, and more concerned with structure than material, he set out – initially on paper – the groundwork for what would become a minimal vocabulary, in his sculptures as in his books: the tension between two parallel lines, often coupled with isolated words, divided internally.