TEST PRESS is a display of student publications from the archive of designer, collector and teacher Henk Groenendijk. These publications have been produced by students of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam over a period of 20 years and were collected as a byproduct to many years of teaching and balance on the fine line between the classroom and the world beyond education.
They highlight a transition from what in the late 90s was referred to as ‘Dutch Design’, becoming more international and open, removed from an imposed national style. The archive is made up of almost 500 publications (often unique or produced in small print runs) and has a large variety of methods, aesthetics and topics ranging through language, typography, and contemporary visual culture to name a few.
For Test Press Henk Groenendijk is opening up this archive and putting it in full view. Within it are curated selections by a number of guests: Riet Wijnen (artist & curator), Lies Ros (former member of design studio Wild Plakken), Åbäke (design collective, London/Paris), Kate Banar & Orin Bristow (both recent graphic design graduates from KABK, The Hague & Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam). Each selection offers its own subjective view on the archive and in its own way proposes a different possibility of describing a canon.
This magazine —I rather like to call it a ‘fanzine’— collects transcripts of conversations with the guests and curators, as well as reproductions of the selected publications and a full list of all publications in the collection.
curating, editing & design: Henk Groenendijk, Elisabeth Klement, Matthias Kreutzer
©2019 supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL
stapled magazine, 210 x 297 mm, pages 96, English
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Test Press fanzine is always part of all Test Press Books Events at KO-OP, Sofia /12*-22 Oct 2023