This suite of 3 photographs documents a 1970 show of the Canadian conceptual art group, N.E. Thing Co. (NETCO), at the now defunct Protetch - Rivkin gallery in Washington D.C.. The images consist of one installation view and one detail view of the NETCO branded Information Sheets, and an installation view of identical wall clocks that are labeled and set to different time zones. At first glance, the exhibition looks more like a nondescript office space, but on further inspection, the detail view of the gridded Information Sheets shows a nude woman standing at an open door of a car. Borrowing from the aesthetics of corporate branding, the NETCO Information Sheets are the standardized template for how N.E. Thing Co. presented their photography and documents.

N.E. Thing Co. was a legally incorporated business entity formed by Iain and Ingrid Baxter in 1967 to be used as a conceptual mechanism to host their artistic endeavors. Their work in photoconceptualism was hugely influential to the 1960s conceptual art movement in Canada, investigating modern life by photographing urban work environments and outdoor sites of leisure on family trips. Each Information Sheet pictured shows a single image on the notarized, gridded stationary that identifies the photographic project by date and title as well as a brief description of the project. Clocks and time were also major motifs in their early work that explored spatio-temporal experiences in their travels where they would traverse the five time zones of Canada.

Beyond photography, NETCO worked in site-specific installations and performances. Their perceptive work was invaluable to the Vancouver arts scene and their work was shown at institutions such as the Modern Museum of Art before they disbanded in 1978. While only working for a little over a decade, NETCO produced thousands of works. In 2020, Brick Press revived NETCO’s “Companies Act” which was an out of print book published in 1978 which was a 359-page, comprehensive look at their oeuvre through their notes, press articles, and photographic documentation of works.