Uncommon Commercially Printed Artist's Book
The Book of Slab
Notes: An artist's book, designed like a book in the Time-Life series, with a cut-away silhouette of Australia on the cover and a number of inserted pieces, including facsimile or faux book pages and commercial advertisements. Other pages reproduce what purport to be newspaper excerpts and government reports. As a commercially printed book, the overall affect is similar to Andy Warhol's Index Book.
[112] leaves plus one black-and-white overhead transparency and one 7-in. flexidisc record of music by the sound artist Rainer Linz.
Hopkins, perhaps unique among book artists, was a professional athlete on the Carlton Australian rules football league. After his sports career, he formed a sports statistic company, a printing firm, and a publishing house.
"This limited edition bookwork is an ambitious undertaking that is a multimedia performance. It defies any ordinary definition of book, bookwork, artist's book, or even book experience. It is a different experience, created by a poet-printer, typographical master, artist, universal seeker"—Judith Hoffberg, Quarterly Review of Books by Artists (no. 31).
The edition was 250 copies (see Hopkins, The Stats Revolution, p. 52) and it is rather uncommon, with just two institutional holdings outside of Australia.
Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing). A fine copy.
Publication: St. Prahran, Victoria, Australia: Champion Books, 1983.
Item No: #306805
Price: $400