L-13 Rejects and Rarities Dept
This is the first box set edition we made with Billy Childish for the first ever exhibition we did with an artist.
We Are All Phonies was a survey show of Childish's output dating from the 1980's. We managed to get an incredible range of work into our small gallery space at the time (the aquarium - a small Georgian shop on Woburn Walk, WC1), with paintings, books, records and ephemera. We even had one of Billy's vintage bicycles on show, painted the walls in colours chosen by Billy, released a 7" record 'You Are All Phonys' with an etched drawing on the B side, made little prints on a desktop printer, published a chapbook of poetry 'Knight of the Sad Face' and a scrappy little handmade exhibition catalogue, amongst many other things. This exhibition manifested the blueprint of the L-13 ethos... that a gallery should be a hive of creative activity, not just a display area.
This box set was the principle edition with 26 lettered copies that were exhibited in a grid on the wall as part of the exhibition, becoming less of a grid as people bought them and took them away.
This copy is one of the 3 AP sets we made and has been hidden away in our archive since then.
It contains, a copy of the 7" single, a signed lyric sheet, a poetry chapbook, a DVD of the short film The Man With Wheels by Eugene Doyen, a print of a pinhole photo by Wolf Howard, and a copy of the little exhibition catalogue. All sealed behind tacked on linen in the back of an original painting of the Hangman Gallows on nailed timber boards with a wire surround - all hammered together by Billy and L-13 Chief Enineer Steve Lowe in the gallery over a weekend. Much to the annoyance of our neighbours in the flat above.
Oil on timber, 2003
30 x 25 x 5 cm
Artist Proof from an edition of 26 lettered copies signed on a title card pinned to the canvas on the back.
Price and availability on application
Keep checking back on the L-13 Rejects and Rarities Dept as we'll be adding more early painted books and editions as we uncover them in the archive.
If anyone has photos of this exhibition we'd be very happy to see them. Back then we didn't think to document anything.
