Working under the name Dexter Sinister, artists Stuart Bailey and David Reinfurt are bringing The Serving Library to the Banff Centre’s Walter Phillips Gallery this summer.
The installation is a representation of a library of their past works, along with workshops or seminars, amidst a gallery setting.
“Dexter Sinister is a shared name that Stuart and I use for doing projects such as this one, " said Reinfurt. “It’s also the name of a space in New York City in a basement that for five years ran as a very small bookstore.
“It was only open one day a week and was hard to find, with low ceilings – it was an office space that we worked in and we also used it for events about every two months. "
The pair have a background in graphic design and printing.
“We ran that space for five years; we called it a bookstore, but we also called it a workshop to put a bit of emphasis on the idea that there was some degree of working in public, " explained Reinfurt.
“We ran the bookstore not as a commercial venture, but as a way to see who’s actually reading the things that we’re working on and foster some sense of a community around them. "
For the work on display at the Banff Centre, the opening reception was held July 9. An artist’s talk will be held in the space July 14 at 7 p.m. and for the next five weeks, seminars will be held during the mornings in the space.
Bailey explained how the project shifted from being a bookstore and publication to exhibition work.
“As well as doing that bookstore project and regular design work – typically making books, with and for artists and galleries – we without really expecting it started to get asked to do projects in galleries and museums, which usually involve some form of live publication, " he said.
For example, they once made an edition of the magazine in a gallery space over the course of three weeks, at the Contemporary Art Centre in Geneva.
“We’ve switched from being a more straight graphic design practice – making books, posters, websites, whatever – to doing these more ambiguous projects, which are between exhibitions and publishing, " said Bailey.
Now with this stage of the work, they are looking at creating a bigger umbrella project to contain all the related works, by starting an actual registered institution.
“That project is called The Serving Library, " said Bailey. “There’s about five or six different strands of activity there, of which what’s being shown (in Banff) are two of them. "
As the project now moves forward, their plan is to publish as an online publication and, once every six months, to produce a print version from which new works would be added to the library.
“We’re intending to eventually end up with a physical site, an actual library space, and that’s what this exhibition is modelling; a proposal for what that place would become, " said Bailey. “The idea of the setup here, and eventually in a library itself, would be to try and work out a new foundation course within this environment, where we’re both referring to and drawing on the books and objects as we go along.
“So the project in Banff is a model of what we intend that to become, as a way of working out what it will become. For six weeks we’re doing a bunch of seminars with the residents here and this will all take place within this space. "
Creating the work in a public space is not what’s important, he stressed.
“It’s not about that we’re doing it in public, it’s more that we like to use the excuse of a budget and invitation to setup something that we couldn’t do normally, and so the public aspect is definitely something we consider after we’re all out of here, " he said. “This thing is intended to work as an exhibition as much as it’s intended to function as a seminar room, and the gap between those two things is how you make it both and is most difficult and of interest. "
Reinfurt echoed this sentiment.
“We could easily meet in another room at The Banff Centre, so obviously the strangeness of having the meeting with the residents in here every day and using it as a meeting space we think is productive, " he said.
“We set up the Dexter Sinister bookstore very much as almost a joke, " added Reinfurt. “We didn’t think it would work in any way – it was three bookshelves in the corner of a ratty basement – so we had no idea it would actually work at all, and in that case we were terrifically surprised that by selling books, we could pay rent on the space.
“And then getting invited to share things in exhibition contexts and receiving a good amount of interest in what we were doing, then that project happened quickly. We were trying to think of some larger structure that might work, that could last longer and burn slower. "
