Anne Turyn

Southfirst is very proud to present Anne Turyn: Top Stories Archive & Selected Flashbulb Memories, 1978-1991 the first exhibition presenting the archives of prose periodical Top Stories. A serial publication founded and edited by Anne Turyn, Top Stories provided a forum for non-traditional prose, narrative works and word/image projects for over a decade. Flashbulb Memories, a series of photographs created by Turyn while she edited Top Stories, further explores the relationship of text and image. The show is curated by Maika Pollack.

Top Stories started under the auspices of Hallwalls, in Buffalo, New York, while Turyn was co-programming performance and readings at the venue in the late 1970s and moved with Turyn to New York in the early 1980s. Most issues featured a single writer, and authors included Kathy Acker, Laurie Anderson, Constance DeJong, Jane Dickson, Pati Hill, Jenny Holzer, Mary Kelly, Cookie Mueller, Linda Neaman, Lynne Tillman, and Gail Vachon, with contributions and photographs by artists and writers including David Armstrong, Joe Gibbons, Nan Goldin, Peter Hujar, Gary Indiana, Tama Janowitz, Glenn O'Brien, Richard Prince, and Leslie Thornton. Cumulatively, the journal’s 30 issues show independent chapbooks and small presses as important in fostering and providing a venue for a punk, feminist aesthetic developing in downtown New York.

The exhibition presents correspondence, drawings, photographs and ephemera relating to all aspects of the periodical’s production. Exhibition highlights include a complete and unpublished issue of Top Stories by Lucy Lippard (1984), original manuscripts by Constance DeJong and Lynne Tillman, archival video and audio from Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center (Buffalo) and photographs from Artists Space (NY) of Top Stories-related readings and events, and the original photographs made by David Armstrong, Nan Goldin and Peter Hujar for Cookie Mueller’s “How to Get Rid of Pimples” (Top Stories #19-20, 1984).

The show also includes selections from Turyn’s Flashbulb Memories (1985-86) series. These analog color prints, taking their name from the term used to describe vividly recalled experiences, combine newspaper headlines with enactments of psychologically charged yet ordinary tableaux. Made before the widespread use of image editing programs like Adobe Photoshop, the works are distinctive for their staged text and image juxtapositions created in studio settings.

Anne Turyn (b. 1954) has a BFA from Antioch, an MFA from SUNY Buffalo, and an MA in Linguistics from CUNY Graduate Center. She has had solo exhibitions at Hallwalls (Buffalo, NY), the Visual Studies Workshop (Rochester, NY), Printed Matter (NY), Real Art Ways (Hartford, CT) and the Contemporary Arts Museum (Houston), among other venues. Her work was recently included in shows at Yale University’s Green Gallery (2017), the Denver Art Museum (2010), and the Museum of Modern Art (2010). Her work is in collections including the George Eastman House (Rochester, NY), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art. She lives and works in New York.