Art Metropole

13 Sep. 2025

Book Launch: Golden Pavilion Notebook

Time

3:00-5:00 PM

Please join us Saturday, September 13th, from 3:00 to 5:00 PM, to celebrate the launch of Golden Pavilion Notebook, a new artist’s book by Barbara Balfour.

During the reception, there will be intermittent readings of excerpts from the publication.

Ostensibly about Kinkaku-ji, the golden pavilion located in Kyoto, Japan, Golden Pavilion Notebook is at the same time a reflection on impermanence: nomenclatural, architectural, familial. Balfour’s connection to this pavilion is inextricably linked to her late father’s documentation of it in slides, dating from the late 1950s and early 1960s.

In this book, you will encounter such things as:
various names changes
a conflagration
the start of the story
a few false starts
more of the same
duplicates, replacements, facsimiles
slides, carousels, postcards
clichés
disappointment
Japanese breakfast impermanence
a family chestnut

Barbara Balfour’s art practice is primarily print-based – spanning artists’ books, multiples, and installation. Her curatorial projects, critical writing, and conference papers tend to focus on print media and text-based art. She is particularly fond of lithography.

Balfour wishes to acknowledge the support of the Department of Visual Art & Art History, York University, Toronto.

Please note that the inclusion of an em dash does not indicate that this text is AI-generated.

1.