ITEM #105
Enduring Freedom, The Poetry of a President
Elisabeth Tonnard
2011, 8.25"x 6"
softcover artists' book
Speeches that George W. Bush made shortly after the 9/11 attacks, are turned into poetry in this book. The tone varies as we witness consolatory words and war speech. What does not change is the intensity of the rhetoric used. The edition is printed on a paper that adds its own voice to the project in the form of a watermark. It reads “conqueror”, the brand name of the paper. Not only does that word seem to describe the voice in the book, it is also a description of itself; the watermark as a rhetoric, as a conquest. 16 pages, inkjetprinted and handbound.
Value: $25
current bid: $13
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.