This is Not a Pen - Recent News

24.04.09
KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Denmark
We are happy to announce that all four editions are now on display and available from the shop at the KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Denmark.

John Hansard Gallery
All four editions are now available from the shop at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton. The gallery is located in the University of Southampton and directions, maps and opening times can be found on their website.
link to John Hansard Gallery.

004 PAINT OVER - Accelerator
In conjunction with their exhibition at Kunstforeningen GL STRAND, artist group Paint Over present their magnificent particle accelerator. Signed editions will also be available at GL STRAND after the exhibition ends January 28th 2007.

001 PETER CALLESEN - Wishing Pen in Denmark
Helene Nyborg Contemporary presents Peter Callesen’s Wishing Pen for the first time in Denmark in November 2006. Make your wishes for the New Year come true…

003 KATHRINE ÆRTEBJERG - Rokeby
Edition No. 003 by Kathrine Ærtebjerg is available online via Rokeby Gallery, London.

New Box
One month after the launch, black boxes with transparent lid were introduced replacing the tube case presentation of the Launch Editions.

East End Display
The first three editions in the tube case Launch Edition Boxes on display at Mar Mar Co in Cheshire Street, off Brick Lane in the heart of London's East End.

Multiples at Tate
This is Not a Pen is presented at Tate Modern London as part of the multiple range.

Frieze Art Fair
This is Not a Pen presented by the emilyTsingou gallery at the Frieze Art Fair, London, October 2006.

This is Not a Pen - Background

It all began back in October 2005 at a Clerkenwell pub in old London. Artist Raul Ortega, artist Kirsten Reynolds, and art historian Line Rosenvinge, met during an Artangel project. Kirsten had long played with the idea to explore the float pen, she says:

Since early childhood I have been aware of float pens, as my parents used to have one depicting the ship that sails from England to Bergen, Norway. They must have bought it as a souvenir in the 1960s when they used to go on holiday there every year. They did, in fact, take me once on my first birthday, but that was to be their last trip and I have no memory of it, just photographs of myself as a baby and the souvenir pen as the only proof that it ever happened.

Perhaps it is for this reason that I have always had a fondness for these pens, as they seem to represent a lost time, a place of non-existence, or other world. The slow, smooth movement of the object inside the pen is a motion from another era; sedate, dignified without the urgency and rushing that we associate with the modern, urban world.

Whether the image on the pen is a Cadillac outside the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, a London Bus outside the Houses of Parliament or the elevator on the Space Needle in Seattle, the motion contained within the pen is identical. Nothing can alter it or disrupt it’s sedate gliding action.

Kirsten further developed the idea together with Line, the idea matured, and one year on the first three editions were launched.

This is Not a Pen, June 2007