‘For me, it's like buying gifts for myself and some are really fantastic: occasionally I am really amazed by what I have bought when it arrives, as often the catalogue description does not do justice to the physical object itself.’ ⎯ Jonathan Monk

Jonathan Monk is an artist who loves other artists. His work draws on oblique autobiographical references and personal anecdotes together with art historical strategies and legacies to express a critical camaraderie in his subject. Cover Version features a selection of seminal publications from Monk’s extensive collection of artists’ books. Sol Le Witt, Lawrence Weiner and Ed Ruscha are represented side by side to form a cogent series, which presents a contemporary investigation into materiality and the problems of signification in conceptual art publishing. An integral section of Cover Version is a transcribed telephone conversation between Jonathan Monk and Seth Siegelaub, which unfolds and discusses their mutual obsession with book making and collecting whilst speculating on the nature of the object. This ‘collectable’ book also has three different covers designed with its monetary value in euros, dollars and pounds, a direct reference to Lawrence Weiner’s 1968 publication Statements.
close