burning with pleasure
a r c h i p e l a g o

Burning with pleasure is a long-term project by archipelago that presents artists books in an exhibition format.

This exhibition brought together 35 books and periodicals produced over recent months, self-published or from small publishers. They came from 15 countries including Egypt, Japan, and Argentina. The selection encompassed publications by Marianne Bjørnmyr, Laura El-Tantawy, Nicholas Gottlund, Ikuru Kwuajima, Tom Lovelace, Sophy Rickett and innovative publishers’ projects such as Moby Dick and Highchair Editions.

The publications explored aesthetic, social and political issues related to photography such as abs­traction, image privacy and the politics of representation. Through the concept, the choice of format, the treatment of images and their articulation via texts, these artists and publishers explore the many possibilities offered by publishing as an art form. The books were available for sale throughout the exhibition.

a r c h i p e l a g o is a platform for curatorial and artistic projects focusing on contemporary image culture and editorial practices; each project is connected to the next and functions as an exploratory element of a continuous strand of research. archipelago was founded by Magali Avezou in 2015. Avezou studied arts management at University Paris X and photography at Central Saint Martins and London College of Communication. Her curatorial projects include murmur, an exhibition on abstraction in photography presented at Flowers Gallery London in 2016 and 26 Caledonian Road, a site-specific exhibition commissioned by London College of Communication. In August 2016 she was curator in residence at Das Weisse Haus in Vienna, Austria. She collaborates with Yet Magazine and Photomonitor.