Stephen Perkins: Mining the Archive reception

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courtesy James Watrous Gallery of the Wisconsin Academy

A display of artists books and more.

"Stephen Perkins: Mining the Archive," 2023.

Prints, ephemera, and accordion books from the collection of artist and curator Stephen Perkins will be joined by even more accordion books from Kiki Smith, Kara Walker, Richard Long, Bea Nettles, Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Anish Kapoor, among others. The display highlights “activities that operate outside the traditional gallery system,” according to Perkins. A reception will take place from 6:30-8:30 p.m. on Feb. 17. Current hours: noon-6 p.m. Thursday-Friday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sunday.

media release: A two-part exhibition featuring artists' prints, ephemera, and accordion books from the extensive collections of artist and curator Stephen Perkins. Perkins describes his career as "resolutely underground, involved with alternative cultural initiatives: performance-related works, the zine and artzine underground, the international mail art network, politically engaged works, and a myriad of activities that operate outside the traditional gallery system." Over several decades of focused research, Perkins has developed a remarkable resource that he shares through exhibitions, self-published exhibition catalogues, blogs, and intimate pop-up gatherings.

There will be an opening reception held at the gallery on February 1 from 6:30-8:30pm. Join artist/curator Stephen Perkins and the Wisconsin Academy staff to celebrate the opening. A brief gallery talk by Stephen Perkins will begin at 7:00 p.m. Free and open to the public. Light refreshments available. Masks encouraged. Find info on more events below.

Subspace Works will feature several large assemblages of artworks—photocopies, prints, drawings, postcards, and more—that were first presented at the small gallery Perkins curates in his Madison home. Artists represented range from internationally celebrated figures like Bruce Nauman, Barbara Kruger, and Adrian Piper to less familiar names working across performance, mail art, comics, and zines. Their arrangement is idiosyncratic and non-linear, creating a rich web of associations and connections between the individual works. Through his curation process (in Perkins' words, “mining the archive") the assembled works are transformed into fascinating and coherent wholes.

Artists' Accordion Books, the second half of the exhibition, will focus on works by some of the most intriguing figures in contemporary art, like Kiki Smith, Kara Walker, Richard Long, Bea Nettles, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, and Anish Kapoor, among many others. Accordion books occupy a place somewhere between the scroll, the book, and the print, and are often self-published in very limited numbers. This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to experience their visual power in person.

Artists' Show and Tell I feat. Steven Perkins, Levi Sherman, and Kayla Bauer

Saturday, March 4, 3-4:30 p.m.

Artists' Show and Tell II feat. members of the Communication zine community

Saturday, March 25, 3-4:30 p.m.