The Voidoid
By Richard Hell
With Drawings by Kier Cooke Sandvik
Book Launch
Saturday, June 27, 2009, 5:00 – 7:00 PM
Printed Matter is pleased to announce a book launch and reading for Richard Hell's The Voidoid, with drawings by Kier Cooke Sandvik. The launch will take place from 5:00 – 7:00 PM at Printed Matter, which is located at 195 Tenth Avenue in New York City.
Published by Josh Smith and Todd Amicon's 38th Street Publishers, The Voidoid is a novelina that was written by Hell in 1973. A long out of print edition was published in 1996 and this new editions comes with bells and whistles: drawings by young Norwegian artist Kier Cooke Sandvik that both re-articulates the work while providing their own brash narrative.
Before Richard Hell's well-known life as a musician began, he was a practicing writer. The Voidoid was written as his life shifted from poet to punk-rock icon and reflects the grimy spirit of that bygone era. Perhaps, the artist himself best explains this:
The Voidoid was written in 1973 in a little furnished room on East 10th St. I was staying with Jennifer (‘my thoughts and me are like ships that pass in the night') in her apartment down the block overlooking the graveyard at St. Mark's Church. The Neon Boys was stalled because we couldn't find a second guitar player... Every day I'd take a bottle of wine with me across the street to the $16-a-week room I'd rented for writing. The method was I'd keep going till I got to the end of a single-spaced page, which was pretty far. I'd wake up an hour later and have to drink a whole lot of water.
Both Richard Hell and Kier Cooke Sandvik will be present for a signing following a short reading by Hell. Signed copies will be available for pre-order for those unable to attend the launch.
Richard Hell is the author of the novels Godlike (Akashic Books, 2005) and Go Now (Scribner, 1997).
Kier Cooke Sandvik is a 22 year-old Norwegian artist.
The Voidoid is published by 38th Street Publishers and is available at Printed Matter's storefront and on online at www.printedmatter.org. Retailing at $14.00, the publication is 128 pages and contains 34 black and white images.
Other available publications by Richard Hell include Artifact: Notebooks from Hell 1974-1980. No. 37 and a recent collaboration with Christopher Wool, Psychopts.
For more information please contact James Hoff @ printedmatter.org.
Printed Matter, Inc. is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 1976 by artists and art workers with the mission to foster the appreciation, dissemination, and understanding of artists' books and other artists' publications.
Printed Matter, Inc. has received support, in part, through grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Altria Group Inc, the Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, The Gesso Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Schoenstadt Family Foundation, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and individuals worldwide.
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