LAWRENCE WEINER — Twenty Works — Anthony d'Offay, London, 1980

Exhibition poster produced for Lawrence Weiner's show Twenty Works at Anthony d'Offay, 23 Dering Street, London, 22 October–19 November 1980. Offset lithograph in black and blue on white paper, 49 × 64 cm.

The poster is structured as a two-column register ruled in blue, each cell containing one of twenty language works in bold uppercase type. Gallery address, exhibition dates and private view details occupy a ruled footer box in the same typographic register as the works themselves — institutional information and artistic statement held within an identical frame, neither subordinate to the other. E-artexte catalogues the sheet as both exhibition ephemera and a work of art. An example is held by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

By 1980 Weiner had been working with language as sculptural material for over a decade. His statements — describing materials, actions, movement, spatial relations — do not require physical realisation. They can remain as words. They circulate through walls, books, posters, sound. MoMA describes these works as sculptures made from language; Tate emphasises the active relationship between the statement and whoever receives it. The exhibition also entered recorded speech: William Furlong's conversation with Weiner about the twenty London works was issued by Audio Arts in 1980, the same year.

The poster performs a related operation in print. Twenty works are compressed into one portable sheet — folded, circulated, opened, retained. Presented during the opening year of d'Offay's contemporary programme at 23 Dering Street, the sheet does not simply document the exhibition. It carries it forward.

The twenty works: An Object Tossed from One Country to Another · The Arctic Circle Shattered · A Turbulence Induced Within a Body of Water · Folded · To the Sea · Slowly Raised Water · Done Without · Over the Hill · As If It Could · To Show and to Tell · Made Quietly · (Turned) Red as Well as Black · Taken to a Point of Tolerance · Often Replayed (Played Again) · With Relation to Reason (Often) Moved About · (Often) Moved About Within the Context of (A) Reason · Some Things (Packed Up) Some Things (Laid Down) All Overdue · Having Been Brought Back at a Point of Passage · Blown Away Under Certain Circumstances · Many Objects Put Upon Many Other Objects in Place of Some Other Objects No Longer Used to Form a Pile.

Condition: good; previously folded into sections, with pronounced fold lines, handling creases, light surface marking, minor edge wear and age toning.

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