Keeping “by” in lower case cleverly accentuates the theme of open-endedness, though it may have simply been the result of a typo left unattended. In a work by Alison Knowles, agency is more a function of adjacency, attachment, or intimacy than of ownership. Most obviously, “by” denotes authorship, as in a corpus of texts written by Alison Knowles, yet it also suggests facilitation, a process brought about by means of Alison Knowles, or proximity, i.e., close by Alison Knowles. The preposition’s pliability is the point.
Center: Alison Knowles.įEW TITLES ENCAPSULATE an exhibition’s argument as succinctly as “by Alison Knowles: A Retrospective (1960–2022).” Curator Karen Moss borrows that “by” from a slim volume of the same name, a collection of the artist’s compositions issued through the “Great Bear” pamphlet series of Something Else Press in 1965. Performance view, Festival of Misfits, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, October 24, 1962. Alison Knowles, Proposition #2: Make a Salad, 1962.
