Supplement
Avis Newman (1993)
Avis Newman is an artist whose practice takes many forms. Supplement represents an opportunity for Newman, whose work has persistently focused on the relationship between description and knowledge to address these concerns in the form of a book. The printed pages of Supplement play with the possibility of translucence in ways similar to her paintings, while its form as a boxed object − in a slipcase heavily pigmented with Caput Mortuum − connects it to Newman’s constructed works.
The pages of the book are uncut and are printed on smooth, mould-made paper that is thin enough to reveal glimpses of successive pages which are printed in combinations of marks that recall those used by printers to indicate where a page is to be trimmed by a guillotine. The book’s title suggests it is both additional and complementary to an unspecified thing, the shape and content of which can only be presumed through an inspection of the constituent parts.
