Jennifer Ramkalawon is Curator: Western Modern and Contemporary Graphic Works
Jeremy Deller I blame the Internet
The message in Deller’s print may be the cry that has been uttered throughout many homes during this past year of Covid enforced working from home, home-schooling and interminable Zoom calls. This is the first print by the 2004 Turner Prize winning artist to enter the British Museum’s collection. It was published by Studio Voltaire and purchased with funds from the Rootstein Hopkins Foundation, money from which is used specifically to acquire works on paper by living artists (or who have died within the past ten years), who have been resident in the United Kingdom and participated in its artistic life.
This is one of a series of poster-sized prints that reflect Deller’s interest in formats of mass communication as well as his wry sense of humour. Although made six years earlier, it could almost be a companion piece to Deller’s recent digital print ‘Fuck You 2020’, also published by Studio Voltaire and sold in aid of charities supporting children, young people and communities who have been adversely affected during Covid-19.
Rachel Whiteread Untitled
The humble postcard may seem an unusual acquisition for the British Museum, however those made by contemporary artists fit in well with our collection of ephemera such as lottery tickets and tradecards from previous centuries. These works provide a unique a snapshot in time. However, I must admit I was rather alarmed when we recently received an enormous gift of over 1,000 postcards from Jeremy Cooper, the foremost scholar in this field. Sorting through the acquisition with my colleague Stephen Coppel was no mean feat, but we managed to create a coherent narrative to tell the story of this democratic art form utilized by so many contemporary artists.
In 2019 we curated the exhibition The World Exists to be Put on a Postcard, artists’ postcards from 1960 to now which showcased a selection of around 300 works from Cooper’s gift, including examples by a range of notable artists such as: Carl Andre, Joseph Beuys, Tacita Dean, Gilbert & George, Susan Hiller, Richard Long, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Dieter Roth, Gavin Turk, Mark Wallinger and Rachel Whiteread. The latter, whose postcard is shown here, is an avid collector of postcards. In this example she has punched holes into an ordinary tourist postcard and virtually transformed it into a 2D sculpture. With such a comprehensive gift of 1,000 postcards now in the collection, we are no longer acquiring work in this area!
Luigi Conconi Ruit Hora
For the past few years an anonymous donor has been generously presenting Italian prints to the British Museum. Ranging from the late nineteenth century to around the mid-1960s, these parcels of prints, often from Mattia Jona’s gallery in Milan, land on my desk with regular frequency. I was thrilled to include several (including this print by Luigi Conconi) in a recent display of Symbolist prints to coincide with the British Museum’s Munch exhibition in 2019. The Norwegian artist was drawn to the movement which sought subjects from deep in the imagination.
Born in Milan, Conconi originally trained as an architect, but in the1880s and 1890s he worked as an illustrator and was soon producing work which reflected his interest in dark, visionary themes. This print was part of a project with the sculptor Prince Paolo Troubetzkoy to produce clocks which were intended as a daily memento mori. The project was never realised, but a small circle can be seen in the print where the hands of the clock were intended to be fixed.