Scrolling through Motto’s online store, with its seemingly endless collection of publications ranging from the obscure to the limited edition, you’d be hard pressed not to want to pick one up and rifle through the pages to get a sneaky look at what lies within the beautiful covers. You’re now able to do exactly that, as the Swiss-born magazine and book distributor sets up a permanent shop in Melbourne.
Motto isn’t by any means a newcomer in Melbourne’s art book scene. The company has been distributing to Perimeter Books and World Food Books with their unique, hard-to-find titles, which are often only available in small print runs, for years.
The permanent store, located in the Compound Interest in Collingwood, will also double as an event space. The first will be the An Individual Note series, which takes the book An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics as its reference point. The series of performances, discussions and lectures will highlight the role of sound in contemporary art, as well as its creation, manipulation, appropriation and representation. A type of informal discussion will result, with a complementary exhibition documenting it as it evolves.
