Publications

Helen Mirra

Sky-wreck

"Is a non-remote horizon always a concealment? If a portion of sky has been carved and set loose to rest upon land, is it the result of an illegal language spoken in the town?"

Ben Marcus, from A Horizon Grammar

A hybrid of artist's book and catalogue, this unique publication, designed in collaboration with the artist, is divided into three separate books. One features photographs of Sky-wreck, Mirra's conceptually multi-layered, 2001 installation at The Renaissance Society, accompanied by an essay from Hamza Walker which explicates Sky-wreck's tangled mathematical, visual and poetic aspects, and how these interwoven forms of signification within the piece ultimately "question the ability for that which is unfathomable to assume representation". Another section contains reproductions of Mirra's earlier work, meditated on from a more personal standpoint by poet and friend of Mirra, Jen Bervin, with footnotes from Mirra herself. The third section is an intensely beautiful collaboration between Mirra and experimental fiction writer Ben Marcus, juxtaposing Mirra's exquisite working drawings for Sky-wreck with Marcus's surreal poetic response to them entitled A Horizon Grammar.