The surprise (7” vinyl)

The Surprise, 2019
Found 7 inch single 45 rpm record with specially printed label and white cover. SIGNED by the artist. Edition Belge Société d'Electricité, Brussels, Belgium. Edition size unknown.
JOM036

The re-labelling by Monk means the original record will be a “surprise” for the purchaser. ALL is left to chance. The edition La Surprise was published in conjunction with the exhibition Calculated Chance, Société d'Electricité, Brussels- an exhibition of works by artists who “who let go [of] control and let in chance while exploring operations of probability, combinatory, contingency and serendipity.”

Through variously witty, ingenious and irreverent means contemporary British artist Jonathan Monk replays, recasts and re-examines seminal works and ideas from modern, conceptual, and minimalist art predecessors. In 2009, Moonk state: “Appropriation is something I have used or worked with in my art since starting art school in 1987. At this time (and still now) I realized that being original was almost impossible, so I tried using what was already available as source material for my own work.”