Patti Smith / Robert Mapplethorpe — Still / Moving, fig-1, London, 2000

14 × 16.5 cm folded / 42 × 16.5 cm unfolded. Offset print on black card with monochrome interior reproduction and text. Published by fig-1 in association with Bloomberg. Very good vintage condition with light handling wear and minor surface marks consistent with age and storage.

Exhibition invitation issued for Still / Moving, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, fig-1, Soho, London, 28 November – 2 December 2000. The forty-fifth project of fig-1, the year-long exhibition programme organised by Mark Francis in which each project occupied the same Soho address for a single week before giving way to the next.

The occasion was the London presentation of Still / Moving, the collaborative film produced by Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe in the late 1970s. Made before Mapplethorpe’s mature photographic practice had fully emerged, the work records a shared period of production between the two artists. By 2000 it had already become an historical document as much as a moving image, returning to public view through a programme concerned with contemporary exhibition rather than retrospective display.

The brochure adopts the same economy as the programme it announces. A black cover reduced to names, title, and dates unfolds into a single film still accompanied by Smith’s text. Promotion and publication become difficult to separate. The exhibition continues briefly as printed matter.

Produced for five days of circulation, few examples appear to have been retained. Most fulfilled their administrative purpose before disappearing. Those that remain now function differently: not as announcements of a future event, but as surviving evidence of an exhibition, a collaboration, and a particular moment within London’s independent exhibition history.

Shipping and handling included in the listed price.