M6J 1V2 79843

goodwater gallery, Toronto, ON
Latex paint on wall
2003

goodwater mailers

At the goodwater, failure is job #1. As an example of this priority, goodwater has published mailers for all of its shows. The mailers are a nod to the amazing mailers published by Art & Project, and to the legacy of mail art/correspondence art in general. When possible, the goodwater mailers were intended to be part of the project being exhibited rather than just promoting/documenting it.

In the case of the mailer produced for Nestor Kruger’s project at goodwater a number of circumstances came into play. A project that we had scheduled to take place at goodwater was deferred for a few months, so we suddenly had an opening. We contacted Nestor to see if he “had anything” that we could use to fill this gap and he suggested that he “reinstall” the project that he had recently completed during a residency at Marfa, Texas. The goal was to reinstall the project – to literally transfer the project – from Marfa to Toronto at 100% scale, even though the goodwater space was somewhat smaller than the Marfa space. The works were successfully installed although they covered the walls and ran onto the ceiling, but the “concept” of the work remained intact. The geometric nature of the work easily adapted to being extended, bent, etc. as needed. The installation was quite beautiful.
When we discussed what the possibilities would be for the mailer for the show, Nestor wanted to create something that would function as a kind of “extension” of the project, a kind of “spin-off” object that each person would receive – produced in a way that the person would be able to intuit that they were receiving a unique work made just for them by the artist.

The title for the exhibition was comprised of the postal code and zip code of the goodwater/Marfa spaces (M6J 1V2 79843). No other information about the project was provided. However, there was additional text added to each mailer. When the recipient opened the mailer they would read the two zip/postal codes, giving some indication to the nature of the show, but in addition to this rather pragmatic data, there was also included in large type, the name of the recipient followed by their completely mangled mailing address. The person’s envelope was properly addressed, but the mailer information was completely wrong, a FAILURE, perhaps even an embarrassment, especially if the receiver was assuming EVERY mailer had this huge error on it – how did this oversight (with my name on it!) happen? And now, what should I do? Should I let those idiots at goodwater know they screwed up the mailer? Should I check with someone else to see if they also got one, and was it WRONG like mine?

What we had done actually was use our filemaker database to output an accurate set of mailing labels in alpha-order and then created a second file where the receivers’ names were in alpha-order, but the subsequent mailing info was completely and randomly shuffled. We used the shuffled file information to laser-print all of the unique mailers that were then folded and inserted into their corresponding “correct” envelopes.

People didn’t know it at first glance, but they had actually “received” an artwork by the artist, mail art, an extension of the exhibition, a thing of beauty, actually.

Months, even years later, people would email goodwater and ask for a replacement copy of “their” mailer because they had misplaced theirs.

Art & Project:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_%26_Project

John Goodwin, 2022