BANK
BANK was a collaborative art group from 1994 – 2003, based in London
2022 Gallerie Neu, Berlin – 3rd Feb – 9th April Status Quo
We wanted to paint the walls pink and blue and have a golf buggy in the gallery but all we got was this white cube graveyard’
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The BANK Fax-Bak Service, 2021, Lenz Press
“Between 1998 and 1999, the London-based art collective BANK operated The BANK Fax-Bak Service. For the project, the group’s members, Simon Bedwell, John Russell and Milly Thompson proof-read and copy-edited more than 300 press releases published by galleries in London and New York. The procedure was simple: after adding their mocking corrections, the artists faxed the promotional texts back to the respective galleries. The BANK Fax-Bak Service exposes the art market’s (ongoing) Sisyphean effort to legitimise itself through boasting, self-important and nonsensical language. Published and distributed by Lenz Press this volume is a comprehensive record of BANK’s notorious project from the late 1990s.” – Lenz Press
“In 352 pages, learn how to piss off a lot of galleries” – Gallien Déjean
Edited by Gallien Déjean and Tenzing Barshee, and co-published with Treize (Paris), Gallerie Neu, and Kunsthalle
Zürich. Designed by Dan Solbach. Full colour, 24 x 31 cm, 352 pages, softcover ISBN 978-88-945353-5-8 €38
SOLD OUT
The BANK Fax-Bak Service is available in Tate Library at Tate Britain. Tate has 12 fax backs in their collection: Tate BANK Fax Backs
A selection of the Fax Backs were exhibited as a group at Gallerie Neu, Berlin – February – April 2022
Links to BANK’s work in Tate Collections:
Faxbacks: http://www.tate.org.uk/search?type=artwork&aid=20528
The BANK archive and copies of The BANK ‘tabloid’ are held within the Tate Archive collections: http://archive.tate.org.uk/TateArchiveUncatCollList.pdf
Copies of The BANK tabloid are additionally held in the Library Journals special collection
BANK, 2001
BANK charts the progress of BANK through a series of 27 shows, taking a journey through its obsession with the mechanics, politics and etiquette of making art, and of making art visible. BANK examines art as collective practice, and curation as art practice.
Paperback, 112 pages, by BANK, published by Black Dog Publishing, ISBN 9781901033427
1901033422 | 1-901033-42-2 | 978-1901033427 | 978-1-901033-42-7
Available through https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781901033427/