This exhibition has been organised with the kind permission and encouragement of Kurt Johannessen.

Sarah Bodman: For UWE Bristol’s Postgraduate Symposium Proof! 2024, I made a short video presentation inviting students, staff and interested parties to join me in making small artworks for an exhibition EXERCISES FOR ALL at Bower Ashton Library, UWE Bristol this September.

This was in response to Kurt Johannessen’s artist’s book Exercises and its subsequent iterations.

Tanya Peixoto introduced me to Kurt Johannessen’s artists’ books at bookartbookshop in London in 2002. Much of his work is instructional and I have used his seminal book EXERCISES many times as inspiration for my own work.

In 2010 I produced An Exercise for Kurt Johannessen in response to one of his exercises: ‘write 100 stories and bury them in a forest’, which I did. The titles of the 100 short stories I wrote and buried for my exercise were taken up in 2011 by BookArtObject an international book arts group founded by artist Sara Bowen. 100 artists each made a book in response to one of my short story titles, and these were completed and exhibited in 2012.

For the 10th anniversary of bookartbookshop in 2012, celebrations were based on theme of: x or what is to be done? I asked Kurt Johannessen if I could select a further
10 (x) exercises from his artist’s book to carry out. The result was X Exercises for Kurt Johannessen published as a free download, DIY self-assembly book on 21.02.2012. The exercises can be identified through reading the texts in Kurt Johannessen’s Exercises.

Today I am still learning through Exercises, and Kurt Johannessen has produced more editions in the series that you can see on his website.

Contributors were invited to dip into one of Kurt’s Exercises books held in Special Collections here at Bower Ashton and make a small creative response to it. We are exhibiting all the works created in the library over September – October 2024.

We have a display of 40+ exercises by artists including: Fernanda Fedrizzi who become a stone, on the Guaíba shoreline at Porto Alegre in Brazil; the ‘Livros de artista, livros-objetos: entre vestígios e apagamentos’ group coordinated by Fabiola Notari in São Paulo, Brazil who responded to the exercise: Write one hundred stories and bury them in a forest, as did Teresa Ogando in Portugal. Pete McCallion (UK) went to a beach and picked up a grain of sand, (twice) at Reynisfjara, Iceland and Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. In Poland, Anna Juchnowicz thought of something she didn’t know. David Dellafiora threw a rock into the sea while he thought of kings at Geelong Waterfront in Victoria, Australia. In Sweden, Sara Elgerot ate peas and thought of princesses. Kath Bell (UK) responded to two exercises: Kiss the Wind and Imagine a stone in your hand to produce an intricate, multi-fold book It Felt a Gift. On a sunny day in August, Rachel Marsh gathered rubbish from the beach at Bucks Mills in Devon and took it to a field for the exercise: Take the time you need. Make a little mast with a little sail. Go out in a field and plant the mast in the ground. Two days later in Wiltshire UK, Linda Parr responded to Rachel and Kurt Johannessen with a colourful sail and mast planted in a nearby meadow. I have included 10 previous exercises in the display along with a new one in response to Whisper to a stone. Draw a tiny galaxy in your hand was performed by Sara Bowen in Australia and made into a flip book. Tom Sowden (UK) ate an orange while he thought of the moon. You can download a list of all the exercises performed here.

I produced a new artist’s book Let’s Talk | Vamos Conversar – inspired by Kurt Johannessen’s exercise: Whisper to a stone – for the exhibition, and will be sending a copy to each participant as thanks for joining in. You can download a free pdf version of it here.

To find out more about Kurt Johannessen’s Exercises series and purchase the books visit:

Other Other Other Other Exercises

Why not read of one Kurt Johannessen’s Exercises books and perform one of your own choice?

This exhibition is open to the public Monday – Friday 9am-5pm. No booking needed. The library is on the first floor of B block. Public parking on meters on main road or at Ashton Court.

For more information on Bower Ashton Library, visitor access and campus map, see the library website. You can also follow the library’s Twitter feed.

UWE Bristol, City Campus at Bower Ashton, Kennel Lodge Road, Bristol BS3 2JT.