Celebration of the Body. Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario, 19 June – 31 July, 1976.

Kingston: N. E. Thing Ltd. & Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 1976. First Edition. The artist’s book and exhibition were launched at the Agnes Etherington Gallery in Kingston, Ontario during the Montreal ’76 Olympics. N.E. Thing Ltd.‘s ‘Celebration of the Body’ demonstrates the aesthetic concerns and relationships between athletic and artistic activity. It is “a tribute to the original concept of the Olympics. The exhibition has several areas of concern: the historical showing how the arts have used human movement in sport and art for visual esthetic expression; the contemporary body art interest showing the current activities in visual arts where the artist uses his or her own body for their visual expression; the athletic, showing the actual Olympics through the use of video and photographs and athletic participation; the performance, including many forms of dance and photographs of dancers; and body awareness, showing all else to do with the body.” The set of sheets include illustrations from various sources superimposed on graph paper as well as a film program, video program, and handlist of art works included in the event. Also included are reprinted texts: “Body Works” by Willoughby Sharp & Liza Bear (from Avalanche), “The Pains and Pleasures of Rebirth: Women’s Body Art” by Lucy R. Lippard (from Art in America), and “The Aesthetic in Sport” by David Best (from The British Journal of Aesthetics). N. E. Thing Co. (Ltd.), a Vancouver-based art collective, played a seminal role in the emergence of the conceptual art movement in Canada, 1967-1978. Focusing on an interdisciplinary practice and using photography, site-specific performances and installation, N.E. Thing Co. is seen as a "key catalyst and influence for Vancouver photoconceptualism" and is considered a precursor to the Vancouver School. N.E. Thing Co. created some of the earliest photoconceptual works to display a tendency to use photography to document "idea-works and their sites, as language games and thematic inventories and as reflective investigations of the social and architectural landscape.” (See Ian Wallace, ‘Thirteen Essays on Photography’, pp. 94-97) Worldcat cites circa 75 leaves in one entry and in another 68 plates and 38 pages. square folio. illus. 85 unnumbered loose sheets in paper portfolio (creasing & short edge tears to portfolio, corner of one sheet creased, another partly soiled on verso). dola2355