The BANK Fax-Bak Service

Between 1998 and 1999, the London-based art collective BANK operated ‘The BANK Fax-Bak Service’. For the project, the group’s members, Simon Bedwell, John Russell and Milly Thompson proof-read and copy-edited more than 300 press releases published by galleries in London and New York. The procedure was simple: after adding their mocking corrections, the artists faxed the promotional texts back to the respective galleries.

‘The BANK Fax-Bak Service’ exposes the art market’s (ongoing) sisyphean effort to legitimize itself through boasting, self-important and nonsensical language. This volume is a comprehensive record of BANK’s notorious project from the late 1990s.