Grunts Rare Books is pleased to announce Final Hot Desert and Three Poets, featuring John Knight, Pol Wah Tse, Graham Wiebe, Jobe Gemmell-Hughes, Ed Roberson, and Mami Takahashi, and curated by Arnold J. Kemp.

Final Hot Desert and Three Poets, curated by Arnold J. Kemp, opens Saturday, February 14th, 1-6pm.

Originally founded in the Utah desert in 2018 as an off-site, roaming gallery model, Final Hot Desert is a constantly evolving alternative space run by Marina Moro and Benjamin Anderson now from their flat in East London. Anderson says, “The name obviously made a lot of sense to people when we were in the desert. It’s the final report on the hot desert grazing management system from a historical bookstore in Utah. It’s essentially a manual about how to move through the desert and use it – in this case for livestock without depleting it. It’s an informational story on how to live and collaborate with the desert, which has its own parameters on how to exist. So of course, there’s this direct connection between this and off-site exhibitions. Everywhere you go there are different rules. Could the off-site shows we’ve done in the desert ever work in London?”

Final Hot Desert and Three Poets changes the rules by bringing three artists who are currently working with FHD, Knight, Tse, and Wiebe, into conversation with three Chicago-based literary minds, Gemmell-Hughes, Roberson, and Takahaski, who will present their work in a reading on March 1st, 2026.

Presented at Grunts Rare Books, Final Hot Desert and Three Poets takes place within both gallery space and bookstore-concept. As a venue that privileges Chicago-exhibition history, small-press publications, artist-led practices, Grunts offers a context in which Final Hot Desert’s artists can operate conceptually anew. The bookstore’s public-facing intimacy foregrounds the March 1st poetry as integral to the exhibition, which will remain on view until April 1st.

Please join us on March 1st at 2pm for a very special reading by poets Jobe Gemmell-Hughes, Ed Roberson, and Mami Takahashi, curated by Arnold J. Kemp. RSVPs are encouraged as space is limited. Please email us at hello@gruntsrarebooks.us to RSVP or fill out link here.

Grunts Rare Books is pleased to announce the next iteration of Grunt’s Radio, curated by Lia Kohl. Please welcome Paige Alice Naylor to the radio!

Naylor is a Chicago-based experimental vocalist, sound artist, technologist and educator. Through sound-making and performance, she investigates the dissolution of time, the breakdown of language, and themes of death & rebirth by way of multichannel sound installation, electronically processed voice, tape loops, handmade electronics, field recordings, text scores, poetry, and repetitive, layered production. Her direct and interpersonal approach creates sonic environments which feel vulnerable and intimate.

She has performed at Rewire Festival (NL), Variations Festival (FR), Public Records (NYC), The Lab (SF), amongst others. Her work has been featured in The Wire, NPR, Longform Editions, NewCity Art, Chicago Reader, and others. 

The works included are Nayor's solo album, The Unearthing, two new vocal Max/MSP experiments, and audio from her light and sound installation, Spectre Song, previously exhibited at the School of the Art Institute Washington Galleries.

Paige Alice Naylor’s mix will play during open hours on Saturdays and Sundays 1-4pm for the remainder of the exhibition.