The Serving Library, 2017/2018

The Serving Library is an artist-run non-profit organization founded in 2011 to develop a shared toolkit for artist-centered education and discourse through related activities of publishing and collecting. It comprises a biannual journal (Bulletins of The Serving Library) published both online and in print, an archive of framed objects on permanent display, and a public program of workshops and events.

During The Serving Library’s residency at ERL, the gallery space serves as a satellite seminar room to host occasional classes for university-level art, design, and writing students from schools across the world, as well as a regular series of public talks and exhibitions building upon the library’s archival material.

The Serving Library maintains a collection of framed objects, each the source of an illustration that has appeared on the pages of its house journal Bulletins of The Serving Library or its predecessor Dot Dot Dot. The collection includes items as diverse as record sleeves, watercolors, woodcuts, polaroids, drawings, screen-prints, airbrush paintings, a car number plate, and a ouija board. Together these varied objects decorate the walls of the library to be drawn into our programs, essentially serving as a toolbox for teaching.

The residency is supported by Arts Council England.