Hannah Wilke
in ‘The World Exists to Be Put on a Postcard’, British Museum, London
7 February – 4 August 2019
Hannah Wilke, Beyond the Permissibly Given (Kuspit), 1978-84. Courtesy: © Marsie, Emanuelle, Damon and Andrew Scharlatt, Hannah Wilke Collection & Archive, Los Angeles; licensed by VAGA at Artist’s Rights Society (ARS), New York, and DACs, London
In the British Museum’s first major display of artists’ postcards, visitors discovered both the politics and playfulness of this unique collection of 300 postcards gifted to the British Museum by the artists’ postcard expert Jeremy Cooper - ranging from feminist artists such as Lynda Benglis and Hannah Wilke, to Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s anti-Vietnam War is Over postcard and the original invitation to Andy Warhol’s Holy Cow! Silver Clouds!! Holy Cow! exhibition.
Artists working with postcards from the 1960s onwards have largely been concealed and overlooked in the history of contemporary art. In this exhibition Cooper stresses that these cards are an artform in their own right, made by artists for a specific purpose and not the sort of postcards one would casually buy in a museum gift shop. Many artists were drawn to the humble postcard as a means of artistic expression. In some cases it was the only record of an artist’s performance or installation piece.