Beau Geste Press

Japanese Schmuck held by Felipe Ehrenberg. Photo Lourdes Grobet.

Center for Book Arts presents Beau Geste Press, an exhibition curated by Alice Motard. The exhibition surveys the history of Beau Geste Press, an independent publishing house active in the southwest of Great Britain from 1971 to 1976, which specialized in limited-edition artists’ books that were distributed internationally via the postal network.

Beau Geste Press (BGP) was founded by the Mexican artists’ couple Martha Hellion and Felipe Ehrenberg, who, together with their two children, moved in the early 1970s into a farmhouse in Devon in the English countryside. There, joined by a group of friends that included the art student and researcher David Mayor, they started printing the work of visual poets, neo-Dadaists and international artists affiliated with the Fluxus movement (Ulises Carrión, Helen Chadwick, Ken Friedman a.o.) and operated like an artists’ residency avant la lettre.

In the spirit of cottage industry, Beau Geste Press adapted its methods and scale of production to its needs, keeping all stages of the book-making process, from design and printing to distribution, under the same—bucolic—roof.

On display will be artists’ books published by the BGP community and those made by visitors from around the globe to their rural outpost, such as Carolee Schneemann, Takako Saito, and Cecilia Vicuña. The publications evidence the group’s attachment to DIY artisanship and its geographical reach—with contributors from as far afield as Mexico, Chile, Hungary, Japan, Iceland, and Canada—but also the diversity of creative practices it embraced.

This presentation at Center for Book Arts highlights the uniqueness of this collective publishing venture which, although it operated from the periphery of the main artistic centers of its time, was among the most productive of its generation. Through a selection among the 80 books BGP has published, the exhibition celebrates the remarkable international influence of this short-lived “community of duplicators, printers and artisans.”

This exhibition is a smaller iteration of the Beau Geste Press retrospective exhibition curated by Alice Motard at Capc Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, France, in 2017.

Artists

Thierry Agullo, Dietrich Albrecht, Marcel Alocco, Eric Andersen, Alin Anseeuw, Taii Ashizawa, Gabor Attalai, Ay-O, Imre Bak, Istvan Balint, Laszlo Beke, Claudio Bertoni, Christian Boltanski, Bernard Borgeaud, Ian Breakwell, George Brecht, Marcel Broodthaers, Hansjürgen Bulkowski, Paul Burwell, Ulises Carrión, Monte Cazazza, Liu Cazes, Helen Chadwick & David Mayor, Marc Chaimowicz, Giuseppe Chiari, Henri Chopin, Robin Crozier, Mario Diacono, Noël Dolla, Peter Donath, Christian Dotremont, Felipe Ehrenberg, Matthias & Yael Ehrenberg, Miklos Erdely, Peter Eötvös, Wolfgang Feelisch, Robert Filliou, Allen Fisher, Roland Flexner, Terry Fox, Hreinn Fridfinnsson, Ken Friedman, K. Fujiwara, Emilio Galli, Tibor Gayor, Jochen Gerz, PaulArmand Gette, , Mick Gibbs, Ludwig Gosewitz, Tom Gramse, Klaus Groh, Kristjan Gudmundsson, Sigurdur Gudmundsson, Helfried Hagenberg, Mary Harding, Béla Hap, Agnes Hay, M. Hayashi, Myor Hayashi, Birgit & Wilhelm Hein, Tamas Hencze, Dick Higgins, Davi Det Hompson, Woodie Haut, Dorothy Iannone, Gervais-Bernard Jassaud, Joe Jones, G. Jovanovics, M. Hayashi, S. Kaneko, Milan Knizak/AKTUAL, K. Kobayashi, Gyula Konkoly, J. Korejs, Takehisa Kosugi, Jarosław Kozłowski, Richard Kriesche, Milan Kun, K. Kuriyama, Peter Lajtai, Jean-Clarence Lambert, Jean Le Gac, Peter Legendy, Maurice Lemaître, Jan Maria Mach, Janos Major, M. Marik, Y. Matsuzawa, Dora Maurer, Anthony McCall, George Maciunas, Joan Mathews, Dora Maurer, Jean-Claude Moineau, Y. Nakajima, Opal L. Nations, Michael Nyman, Yoko Ono, C.O. Paeffgen, Ben Patterson, J. Patocka, Gyula Pauer, Geza Perneczy, Polygonal Workshop, Helena Pospisilova, Clive Robertson, Takako Saito , Carolee Schneemann, R. Sekido, Paul Sharits, Mieko Shiomi, Hlif Svavarsdottir, Sona Svecova, Tamas Szentjoby, P. Tichy, Endre Tot, Peter Türk, Yukio Tsuchiya, Lee U-Fan, Janos Urban, Ben Vautier , Cecilia Vicuña, Jan Voss, Wolf Vostell, Bob Watts, Chris Welch, Stefan Wewerka, Robert Wittman, Paul Woodrow, Terry Wright, Hervé Würz, Hideki Yoshida, Zdenka  Zizkova


Visit the Exhibition


Beau Geste Press will be on view at Center for Book Arts (28 W 27th St, 3rd Fl) from Friday, April 14 through Saturday, June 24, 2023.

CBA is open Monday–Thursday from 11am–6pm and Friday & Saturday from 11am–5pm. Admission is free with a suggested donation.

Exhibition Views

View of Beau Geste Press, curated by Alice Motard. April 2023. Photo Gabriela Rodríguez.
View of Beau Geste Press, curated by Alice Motard. April 2023. Photo Gabriela Rodríguez.
View of Beau Geste Press, curated by Alice Motard. April 2023. Photo Gabriela Rodríguez.
View of Beau Geste Press, curated by Alice Motard. April 2023. Photo Gabriela Rodríguez.
View of Beau Geste Press, curated by Alice Motard. April 2023. Photo Gabriela Rodríguez.
View of Beau Geste Press, curated by Alice Motard. April 2023. Photo Gabriela Rodríguez.
View of Beau Geste Press, curated by Alice Motard. April 2023. Photo Gabriela Rodríguez.
View of Beau Geste Press, curated by Alice Motard. April 2023. Photo Gabriela Rodríguez.
View of Beau Geste Press, curated by Alice Motard. April 2023. Photo Gabriela Rodríguez.
View of Beau Geste Press, curated by Alice Motard. April 2023. Photo Gabriela Rodríguez.
View of Beau Geste Press, curated by Alice Motard. April 2023. Photo Gabriela Rodríguez.
View of Beau Geste Press, curated by Alice Motard. April 2023. Photo Gabriela Rodríguez.
View of Beau Geste Press, curated by Alice Motard. April 2023. Photo Gabriela Rodríguez.
View of Beau Geste Press, curated by Alice Motard. April 2023. Photo Gabriela Rodríguez.
View of Beau Geste Press, curated by Alice Motard. April 2023. Photo Gabriela Rodríguez.
View of Beau Geste Press, curated by Alice Motard. April 2023. Photo Gabriela Rodríguez.
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