Big Words (Not Mine) – Read the words ‘public space’…

Melbourne : Negative Press, 2017. Quarto, self-wrappers with exposed stitching, pp. [576]; illustrated, housed in a silver-lettered card slipcase. The deluxe edition, limited to 40 copies signed and numbered by the artist (a standard edition of 200 copies also published).

“This monumental artists’ book returns Vito Acconci’s text, that inspired Nolan’s large scale installation of 282 painted hessian pennants ‘Big Words (Not Mine) Read the words “public space”…’, 2013, back to the codex form of the book. With Acconci’s text broken into strings of letters, the book interrogates the relationship between documentation and representation and explores Nolan’s continued interest in materials, process and seriality.” – the publisher

‘Big Words (Not Mine) Read the words “public space”…’ was acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria in 2013.

‘One of a group of Australian artists who formed a loose association around the experimental and innovative Store 5 artist-run space in Melbourne between 1989 and 1993, Rose Nolan’s work traverses forms and ideals founded in utopian strands of twentieth-century avant-gardism’. – Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia, website.