ITEM #103
A Dialogue in Useful Phrases
Elisabeth Tonnard
2010, 7.25"x 7.25"
softcover artists' book
A book based on “conversational phrases” that were found in Grenville Kleiser’s Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases, an optimistic handbook from 1917. Kleiser’s conversational phrases starting with ‘I’ were taken and placed opposite those starting with ‘you’. The ‘I’ phrases are running in alphabetical order down the verso pages, the ‘you’ phrases down the recto pages. A dialogue is formed from the random meetings of these phrases. It is a dialogue in the purest sense, a dialogue that expresses nothing other than itself. The book has a square format to indicate the empty room where such communications might be taking place. 178 pages.
Value: $56
Current bid: $50
Elisabeth Tonnard is a poet and visual artist from The Netherlands. She works in the fields of artists’ books, photography, visual poetics and literature. Since 2003 she has published twenty books, which are included in numerous public collections and available through Johan Deumens Gallery, Printed Matter, Photoeye, Le Bal and Walther König. Recently she was awarded the Jury Prize in the Sheffield International Artist’s Book Prize, judged by Maria White (Tate Library) and Sarah Bodman (The Centre for Fine Print Research at UWE). Her book ‘In this Dark Wood’ was listed as one of the best photobooks of 2009 and also received an award in the 2010 Photography Book Now Competition. Tonnard holds an MA in Literature from the Radboud University in The Netherlands and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York. She exhibits internationally and is a member of ABC Artists’ Books Cooperative. For more information: www.elisabethtonnard.com.