Rage Pen, David Blackmore & Michael Hampton

RAGE PEN evolved from research about violent acts charged with frustration, which Blackmore investigated as the Honorary Research Associate with Slade School of Fine Art and UCL Art Museum. The following year, during a residency at Chisenhale Studios David developed RAGE PEN, inviting anonymous ‘Ventees’ to visit his studio with objects that represented sources of frustration in their lives. After a short interview with the artist, ‘Ventees’ were provided with the means to destroy their chosen item. This process was recorded and forms the content for this book. Each book has been personally cut by David with a mitre saw during the book launch. Each copy is made unique by the imperfections resulting from the violent cut. An evolution of the original relational work and a work in its own right RAGE PEN is the most recent and longest running collaboration between Blackmore and Hampton. The pair previously collaborated on an Arts Council of England funded commission for Worcester Museum and Division of Labour responding to Migrant, a 1960’s poetry journal. The project revealed overlapping interests, namely destruction in art and the artists’ book.

David Blackmore is an artist based between London and Dublin. David’s socio-political art practice explores questions concerning consumerism, origin, belonging, and identity through transgressive actions performed for the photographic image, participatory exchanges, sculpture, print, artists books and zines. He studied at the Institute of Art & Design (Dublin) and the University of Westminster (London) completing a Master’s in Fine Art at Slade School of Fine Art (London).

Michael Hampton is a London based writer and critical theorist. In 1998 a chance encounter at Modern Art Oxford with Gustav Metzger—the legendary Auto-Destructive artist—led to an invitation from Metzger to give talks about destruction in art at SPACEX in 1999, and subsequently Instal06, Glasgow. In 2018, with David Blackmore, he co-organised DIAS 2.0, a public event at Chisenhale Studios, London. He is a regular contributor to Art Monthly since 2009, with a special interest in artists’ publishing. His ground-breaking study and tool-kit for practitioners Unshelfmarked: Reconceiving the artists’ book was published by Uniformbooks in 2015.

Published by Folium
108 pages
150 mm x 213 mm
ISBN: 9781914552922