Telephone Telephone +31 09/10/’26, 6-8pm with Melissa Gordon and Riet Wijnen
language: English to join, please RSVP via info@manifoldbooks.nl tickets available at the door: €5,- location:MAP
Dear reader,
After the summer break, we continue with Telephone Telephone +31, a series of meetings on the future (of) artists’ legacies organised by Manifold Books in collaboration with Darling Green and curator Alicja Melzacka. Three more meetings will be organised in October, November, and December. The programme addresses practical, creative, and ethical questions surrounding artists’ legacies from a range of perspectives, including those of curators, archivists, legal advisors, and artists themselves.
On 9 October, we welcome Melissa Gordon and Riet Wijnen—both working as artists, editors and organisers. Within their practice, they approach questions of archiving and legacy-making through the inclusion of other artists’ works and documents in their own presentations; research into art histories, especially of abstraction; and and feminist organising. A short talk by each artist, outlining their practice, will be followed by an open conversation with the public. Upon reservation, a concise and optional reader with related texts selected by our guests will be shared with subscribers to the event, providing additional context for our conversation. Selected publications by Melissa Gordon and Riet Wijnen will also be available to browse during the event.
Telephone Telephone is a regular meeting organised by the NYC-based curatorial office Darling Green to discuss the meaning, uses and methodology of the exhibition form. Part seminar, part reading group and part gathering of , Telephone Telephone is a experiment in dialogue and cooperative discovery.
Looking forward to seeing you, Manifold Books
NB: The fifth Telephone Telephone +31 meeting with guests JJJJJerome Ellis and Will Holder will take place on Novemer 25, from 6pm to 8pm. The date and guests for the final meeting in December 2026 will be communicated soon!
Melissa Gordon is a painter, printmaker and editor living in Brussels, whose work deals with investigation into the feminist histories of gesture, and the making of new painterly language. She studied at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. In her painting, she explores how visual stories emerge from spatial relationships within individual works, series of paintings and architectural settings. She combines techniques such as screen printing, text and collage with research into themes like the representation of women in power structures, the failure of democracies, and questions about gender, authorship and the history of painting.
Riet Wijnen is an artist whose practice involves sculpture, photograms, working through texts, woodcuts and more recently, type design. She is interested in incomplete histories of abstraction, and what and who are already there in ways we might not yet know. To do this she looks to elders, hosting practitioners from the past and present within her work who have been active in the field of art during early modernism, or in science, philosophy, education and activism. Bringing them together through fictional conversations and sculptures to reconsider histories and better understand what comes next, Riet Wijnen centres perception, language and organisational structures. She teaches at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague.
About our current year programme Of Ghosts and Flowers Of Ghosts and Flowers proposes a transition from our 2024 programme The Sphinx's Riddle around grief and transformation to an exhibition and event series about non-linear time experiences in 2025 and 2026. The urgency for this arose from the content of this programme, and how the system of linear time imposed on us disintegrates in the face of death, grief and profound mental and physical transformative processes. In addition, it feels urgent to formulate alternative forms of dealing with time because our system of linear time is linked to our economic system; the biggest driver of climate change. The embodied sensations we will look into include non-human perspectives as well as human ones. Of Ghosts and Flowers departs from the work of Rosemary Mayer (1943-2014). So far, the programme includes exhibitions and projects by Rosemary Mayer, Steve Kado, Clem Edwards, Francisca Khamis Giacoman, Arefeh Riahi and JJJJJerome Ellis.
Initiated by Maartje Fliervoet, Manifold Books is a platform that explores connections between art and books. With each exhibition a few titles are added to its book collection (all including artists’ interventions). As of May 11, 2021, Manifold Books has become a foundation. Its board members are: Arnisa Zeqo (chair), Stephanie Noach (secretary) and Paul Domela (treasurer).
MANIFOLD BOOKS 34 1018RL Amsterdam
NB: Please note: the entrance is located in the corridor between number 30 and 32
