Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1981
Exhibition catalogue
Original card covers
4to
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Stuart Brisley, ICA, 21 April – 31 May 1981.
Texts by Paul Overy, John Roberts, and Stuart Hood.
A document organised around performance after the fact. The cover opens with a definition: Performance — set as a block of borrowed language, positioned against the artist’s name. The work begins in citation before any image appears.
Inside, the pages assemble a sequence of actions translated into print. Black-and-white plates record situations already completed: enclosed rooms, obstructed views, the body in states of endurance, suspension, or depletion. A face seen through a cut aperture. A figure seated, absorbed into a darkened interior. A body submerged, partially visible, held in material conditions rather than depicted as subject.
The Georgiana Collection operates here as a framework rather than a fixed series: an invented institutional structure derived from a domestic address, extending into sound, action, and accumulation. The catalogue does not stabilise this structure but indexes it — listing events, sites, collaborators, and fragments of activity across London, Hamburg, Coventry, Kassel.
Text and image remain discontinuous. Chronologies appear as numbered entries, detached from the images they might describe. Performance is held at a distance, redistributed as documentation, caption, and residue.
The ICA imprint sits low on the cover; the reverse carries only the institution’s name. No image intervenes. The publication maintains a closed surface, with the work contained as record.
Condition: Very good. Light wear to covers, minor handling marks, clean internally.
An object that registers action through delay. Performance translated into sequence, index, and printed field.
Original period item.
