This beautifully bound art book is an anthology of the Toronto-based QueerPaganNomadPunk Esoterrorist Occulture zine The Salivation Army, which Treleaven edited and published from 1996 to 1999. Treleaven has been making movies and “final issues” about Salivation Army ever since. An art fag’s wet dream, this book is amazing to smell and touch-it’s bound like a bible complete with a soft ribbon bookmark and still somehow, doesn’t seem as pretentious as it sounds. They printed 666 copies of the book (no I’m not kidding). It captures a moment near and dear to my heart-the homocore, punk-rock misfit ’90s, when everything rainbow was the enemy and we all sang along to Pansy Division’s Breaking the (Sodomy) Law, went to homo-core fests with photocopied hearts in our pockets and made queer revolution in the back seat of borrowed cars. For this reason I have a nostalgic affection for everything in this book, even if it lacks contemporary social relevance. As a text, however, a lot of it is unreadable, both literally, due to the small print, and because it is dated and sometimes boring and masturbatory, like a lot of personal zines. But its youthful sense of DIY-porn-is-revolution, in a queer-as-fuck lust-filled utopia, I will always appreciate. Highlights include a poem by Michael V. Smith, art by Daryl Vocat and GB Jones. (Zoe Whittall)
by Scott Treleaven, $35, 345 pgs, co-published by Printed Matter, Inc. and Art Metropole, 788 King St. West, Toronto, ON, M5V 1N6, artmetropole.com