Art Metropole

#15088

International Image Exchange Directory: Facsimile Edition

Artist

Image Bank

Price

$25.00

Date

2021

Publisher

Brick Press

Format

Artists' Books

ISBN

9780994838629

Size

13 × 18.5 cm

Length

208 pp

Genre

Canadian

Image Bank began compiling artist’s addresses and image requests to prompt correspondence artworks using the postal system in 1970. These requests first appeared in print in General Idea’s & AA Bronson’s FILE Megazine issues 1, 2 and 3, and they were published in their own volume in 1972 by Talonbooks. Nearly fifty years after its initial release, this revised facsimile edition includes the original list of image requests from over 200 artists alongside examples of mail art from many compelling contributors as well as new archival images from Western Front and Michael Morris.

Exchange Directory comprises an alphabetically ordered list of over 200 artist’s addresses and image requests. Looking at the publication now, the book itself could be seen perhaps as a white pages telephone book for mail art. In between the directory listings, pages of compelling visual imagery from selected contributors adds additional context as to what mail art looked like in its very beginning. The book’s directory includes submissions from artists such as Anna Banana, Joseph Beuys, William Burroughs, Robert Cumming, Robert Filliou, General Idea, Gilbert and George, Ray Johnson, Sol Lewitt, Lucy Lippard, Ed Ruscha, Robert Rauschenberg and many more.