This exhibition brought together over a hundred works—books, posters, prints, and other ephemera—spanning Kennedy’s long engagement with the systems that shape art and its institutions. Kennedy served as President of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design from 1967 to 1990, when the school became central to the development of conceptual art. During and after that time, he produced a body of work that extended the principles of conceptualism with precision and wit. Benjamin Buchloh once described conceptual art as an “aesthetics of administration.” Kennedy understood that language first-hand. He turned the instruments of bureaucracy—forms, memos, reports—into artworks. Kennedy’s books and printed matter make that connection plain, mapping the shift from object to page. Seen today, his publications anticipate the art book fair economy—the culture of rare editions and ephemera that his work quietly prefigured. For the exhibition poster, we recreated a work from a exhibition Garry had at Eyelevel Gallery in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1980. A customized version of Times New Roman was used.
Year: 2012
Clients: Printed Matter, Inc.
Category: Curatorial, Print