RIVER AVON BOOK

First edition, limited to 106 unique copies. Original dark grey paper covered boards, in the original card slipcase with the handwritten title in white pencil to one side (as issued). Unpaginated. 34 pages, each a unique original artwork created by dipping sheets of hand-made paper into silty wet mud taken from the River Avon in Bristol. A fine copy, the binding square and tight with just a touch of fading to the spine panel. The slipcase is fine and structurally sound. A superb example of this early artists book by the multi-award winning sculptor and conceptual artist Richard Long, notably the first presentation of his mud paintings, a technique and medium to which the artist frequently returns.

"I think the first mud work on paper was River Avon Book of 1979, where I had the idea to make this book with the pages dipped in muddy water. So I got all these sheets, quite big sheets, and after they had been dipped in the muddy water they were cut down and bound into these books. That was the first time I used paper with mud on it." - Richard Long (Elliott, 2006). Long is the only artist to have been short-listed four times for the Turner Prize. He was nominated in 1984, 1987 and 1988, and then won the award in 1989 for White Water Line. The intended print-run of the River Avon Book was 120 copies although only 106 were produced. The book is rare in commerce, with not a single copy recorded at auction (rarebookhub). Most copies are held in institutional collections including the Tate Gallery, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. (Fuchs, R. H.: Richard Long, 1986; Elliott, Patrick: Richard Long, Walking and Marking, 2006).