Output details

The Jet Age Compendium: Paolozzi at Ambit

The Jet Age Compendium: Paolozzi at Ambit, in a design executed by John Morgan Studio under my direction, articulates the form of a chronological 'meta-magazine' and comprises Paolozzi's contributions to eight issues of Ambit. Published with a critical, contextualising essay by myself it reproduces the original scale and paper, and includes covers with selected editorial content. It brings unknown work by Paolozzi to a new audience and provided the methodological basis for the exhibition, Eduardo Paolozzi: The Jet Age Compendium (Raven Row, London, 2009), which itself offered a curatorial strategy for literary studies and was the subject of a paper at the 2010 IAWIS (International Association of Word and Image Studies) conference "Displaying Word & Image", University of Ulster, Belfast.

The ‘Compendium’ is part of an investigation of Ambit magazine which published experimental literature by the collaborators, Eduardo Paolozzi and JG Ballard (1967-1980). Content by Paolozzi was chosen to test the validity of the category, "magazine art" (Philpott 1980): original art for non-art titles. Primary material was analysed at the Visual Studies Workshop (USA) and contextual literature consulted. The methodological and thematic convergences between Paolozzi's 'literary' art and J.G. Ballard's 'visual' prose were identified and interrogated. The aim is to interrogate literature through art (Joyce in Art, 2004) and art through literature (The Early History of Avalanche, 2005). W.J.T. Mitchell's theories about text-image reciprocity and current interest in artists' magazines and magazine outputs (see FILE, Rieger, 2008) finds parallels in literary exhibitions (CRASH: A homage to JG Ballard, Gagosian, 2010). The question: can a literary magazine provide insights into art, and can an art exhibition shed light on literature, was tested via a paper in Photography Studies (2009). The’Compendium’ was included in Convergence: Literary Art Exhibitions, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast/Limerick City Gallery of Art & Ormston House, 2011.