Exhibitions
The Private Press Today at Gordon Russell Design Museum, Broadway, Worcestershire. 30th April – 30 June 2016
From Marytn Ould of The Old School Press: An exhibition of twenty UK presses, transferred from the recent show at St Bride. The Gordon Russell Design Museum in Broadway Worcestershire will be hosting an exhibition of private press books under the title ‘The Private Press Today’ which will feature the fine printing of twenty presses using a wide range of skills and techniques. It was originally shown at the St Bride Foundation in Autumn 2015 where it was presented by the Foundation in partnership with the Fine Press Book Association.
The exhibition is curated by Designer Bookbinders fellow Lester Capon, and is sponsored by Bonhams. The exhibits will be displayed on the Gordon Russell furniture within the museum, offering visitors the opportunity to enjoy both the stunning printing work and the museum collection.
A full-colour catalogue is available with an essay on, and images from, every press represented in the show. Produced in collaboration with the Fine Press Book Association, with an introduction by Lester Capon, Curator of The Private Press Today. Price £10. The Old School Press will have on show (and for sale), tokonoma, Palladio’s Homes, and Stockholm Reflections.
Gordon Russell Design Museum, 15 Russell Square, Broadway, Worcestershire, WR12 7AP. http://www.gordonrussellmuseum.org
Collyer Bristow presents Complicity: Artifice and Illusion at Collyer Bristow Gallery, London. Until 7th June 2016
Curated by Rosalind Davis, Zeitgeist Arts Projects.
“The question is not what you look at but what you see.” Henry David Thoreau
Hermione Allsopp, Sasha Bowles, Guy Bigland, Mel Brimfield, Alastair Gordon, Andrew Grassie, Justin Hibbs, Debbie Lawson, Peter Liversidge, Gibson Martelli, Helen Maurer, Damien Meade, Marion Michell, Clare Mitten, John Richert, Joella Wheatley and Virginia Verran
Complicity is an exhibition examining the relationship between illusion and artifice in art. It looks at the inevitable complicity between audience and artist, both integral to the game of viewing an artwork. Forging, faking, imitating, camouflaging and counterfeiting are all accepted as valid tools of the artistic process, used to create new ways of looking at the world; subverting space and place, objects, identity and image and re-imagining and questioning our perceptions of reality in unexpected or subversive ways.
In the context of art and its reception, the viewer, from the very outset, plays an integral role in the complicit act of accepting an art object’s artifice and illusion; suspending reality and disbelief. Artist and audience share a conscious desire to engage in holding the differences between art object and reality in mind simultaneously and so knowingly acknowledge the game of complicity.
“Art is a lie that makes you realise the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.” Picasso
All the Paintings in the Museum – artist’s book and digital slideshow by Guy Bigland is part of this exhibition.
Collyer Bristow Gallery, 4 Bedford Row, London WC1R 4TF. Viewing by appointment during office hours Monday – Friday. For opening hours visit: http://www.collyerbristow.com
Emma Bolland – EXT. INT. a solo exhibition at the University of Leeds, opening 20th April 2016
Emma Bolland has a new solo exhibition EXT. INT. at The Wild Pansy project Space, University of Leeds, curated by Simon Lewandowski and Chris Taylor. It runs from Weds 20th April to Friday 20th May 2016. Bolland will be showing new work created especially for the space: a short film, a text drawing installation, and a short text. The preview takes place on Wednesday 20th April from 6pm to 8pm. All welcome. http://emmabolland.com/about/
Well Said!
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Until 18th September 2016
Harrington & Squires have been asked to take part in an exhibition called Well Said! Favourite Shakespeare Quotes, at the Royal Shakespeare Company Theatre in Stratford upon Avon to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 1616. Twelve artists from diverse disciplines have been asked to respond to a Shakespearean quote chosen by writers, actors and poets. “Our quote was given to us by the writer Jeanette Winterson and is taken from The Winter’s Tale. We are busy designing and letterpress printing a large eight-page book which will be mounted on a circular oak board.”
A visual feast of Shakespeare’s most memorable and inspiring lines. Writers, actors and poets have selected their favourite quotes to be transformed into surprising and beautiful artworks.
The exhibition features works by An Endless Supply, Gary Breeze, James Bulley, Gareth Courage, Freee, Paula Garfield, Jonny Hannah, Harrington & Squires, Lara Harwood, Soraya Syed, The Brilliant Sign Company, Karina Thompson.
PACCAR Room, Level 2, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Waterside, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, CV37 6BB. Admission free.
https://www.rsc.org.uk/exhibitions/well-said
http://harringtonandsquires.co.uk
The Whitechapel Gallery presents Imprint 93, Matthew Higgs’ collaborative 1990s mail art project in its first archive exhibition. Until 25th September 2016
This new archive display unearths rarely seen material from 90s mail art project featuring Jeremy Deller, Martin Creed, Peter Doig and Fiona Banner.
Matthew Higgs, artist, writer and current Director of White Columns in New York, produced and distributed more than 50 works through his publishing project Imprint 93 between 1993 and 1998. An administrator at an advertising agency by day and influential curator by night, Higgs invited artists to create works of art that could fit inside an envelope to be distributed, unsolicited, by mail to an informal group of friends, artists, and curators. Financed by himself and printed on an office photocopier, Imprint 93 served as an ongoing curatorial project which did not require a space, circumvented traditional art world structures, and offered a unique platform and network for artists to distribute their work.
The artists involved in Imprint 93 were often at the beginnings of their careers, working on the periphery of the then emerging ‘YBA’ movement, but would later be celebrated as some of the most important contemporary artists. The artists whose works will be exhibited include Fiona Banner, Billy Childish, Martin Creed, Jeremy Deller, Peter Doig, Ceal Floyer, Stewart Home, Alan Kane, Hilary Lloyd, Paul Noble, Chris Ofili, Elizabeth Peyton, Bob and Roberta Smith, Jessica Voorsanger and Stephen Willats, among others.
Highlights from Imprint 93 include Chris Ofili’s Black (1997), a series of cuttings from his local newspaper showing crimes attributed to black suspects, Elizabeth Peyton’s Untitled (1995), made from a sequence of video-stills of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain performing in 1993, and Martin Creed’s Work no. 88 (1994) a crumpled ball of A4 paper that Higgs and Creed sent to the Tate Gallery but was returned to them, flattened inside an envelope, ‘rejected’ as an unsolicited donation.
Imprint 93 was closely linked to influential and emerging artist-centered initiatives such as London’s City Racing and Cabinet Gallery. Exhibiting the full collection of Imprint 93 editions for the first time the Whitechapel Gallery’s archive display offers a unique insight into a period significant to the development of the British art scene of the 1990s, and beyond.
Pat Matthews Gallery (Gallery 4), Whitechapel Gallery, 77 – 82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX. Admission free. whitechapelgallery.org
Undercover Festival of Flipbooks will be at Bower Ashton Library, Bristol, throughout May 2016. A touring exhibition project in public libraries, curated by Anton Hecht. The second show for this project launched in Darlington Central in October 2015, after a first install in Gateshead central library in 2013 of a set of flipbooks by other artists; this is the second part of the project, supported by Creative Darlington and ACE. The show was in Falmouth Massachusetts USA in January, then at Middleton public library USA in March, before coming back to the UK in April. The next venue is Bower Ashton Library, UWE Bristol in May. The USA tour was supported by Library as Incubator. There is more information on the project, and some videos of the books in action at: http://undercoveranimation.tumblr.com
Technology and the Evolution of the Artist’s Book
30th April – 12th June 2016 at Phoenix Brighton
Building upon Phoenix Brighton’s reputation for presenting unique and highly acclaimed exhibitions of artists’ books, we present an ambitious new project that brings together one of the world’s foremost artists’ books curators and a Brighton-based design team.
As part of the exhibition, on 14th & 15th May 2016 Phoenix Brighton will host a weekend of artists’ books activities, including a Round Table discussion with Maddy Rosenberg of Central Booking, New York, and specialists from the world of artists’ books, plus a special event with workshops and special presentations. More info at: www.phoenixbrighton.org/exhibitions-2/press-release-2016-technology-and-the-evolution-of-the-artists-book/
The Great Gathering – An Installation of Artists’ Books by Chris Ruston at Colchester Natural History Museum. Until 14th May 2016.
In collaboration with the Colchester Natural History Museum, and the Essex Book Festival, Chris Ruston’s installation of seven ‘ammonite ‘ books are on display until 14th May 2016.
The Great Gathering refers to our continued exploration of where we have come from, and where we are going. Responding to both the building and the content of the museum collection, this series of Artist books combines to tell the amazing story of Earth’s history spanning 650 million years.
Fossil collections have been key to unlocking our understanding of evolution. Echoing the spiral shape of an ammonite, each book reflects a significant moment of this journey. From Black holes and dark beginnings, through painted sediment layers, Darwin’s Origin of Species, and recycled National Geographic Magazines, the work charts the inevitability of change.
Seven ‘chapters’ connect further with the history of the building – a de-consecrated church – also echoing the number of days in which God is said to have created the world. This installation invites the viewer to pause and consider themselves as part of a larger ongoing story.
Seven books – Seven moments in History.
Dark Beginnings
The Age of Light and Shadow
The Age of Innocence
The Age of Transition
The Age of Ocean
The Age of Knowledge
Time is Now…
The Natural History Museum is opposite the Castle Museum in Colchester High Street. High Street, Colchester, CO1 1DN. http://www.cimuseums.org.uk Chrisruston.com
Prescriptions
The Beaney House of Art & Knowledge, Canterbury, UK Thursday 21st April – Sunday 14th August 2016
This exhibition focuses on the book art of Martha Hall, on loan from the University of New England, and linked to a University of Kent symposium. Prescriptions will present artists’ books by Maine book artist Martha Hall for the first time in the UK. Hall’s books, created from 1998 until her death in 2003, document her experiences with breast cancer and her interactions with the medical community. They use many constructions and designs that challenge the conventional book form and demand a physical reading.
The Prescriptions exhibition will also include a supporting show of artists’ books by national and international artists responding to themes of art and wellbeing that is curated by Dr Stella Bolaki and Egidija Čiricaitė. Supported by the Wellcome Trust. Artists’ Books and the Medical Humanities – an interdisciplinary symposium will be held at Cathedral Lodge, Canterbury,Thursday 21st April 2016.
Exhibition: The Drawing Room, Beaney House of Art and Knowledge, 18 High Street, Canterbury, CT1 2RA. http://www.canterbury.co.uk/beaney/
Admission free.
Artists’ Book Fairs and Events
Glasgow Zine Fest – 30th April & 1st May 2016
A series of workshops, talks and film screenings will be held in various locations in Glasgow on Saturday 30th April. The usual, delightful zine & book fair will be held on Sunday 1st May at The Old Hairdresser’s.
More information at: http://glasgowzinefest.com
St Bride Foundation Wayzgoose will be held on Sunday 15th May from 11am – 4pm. Bride Lane, Fleet Street, London EC4Y 8EQ. www.sbf.org.uk
Offprint London, May 2016
Joachim Schmid and Elisabeth Tonnard will be showing their artists’ books at Offprint London, at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, 20th-22nd May 2016. More details of the event at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Offprint-Projects/371563492871367
Advance Notice
Photobook Bristol 2016
The third edition of Photobook Bristol will take place from 10th – 12th June 2016 at the Southbank Club in Bristol. “2016 promises to be the most exciting event yet, with a truly global range of speakers coming to Bristol to talk about photography, photobooks, design, as well as getting down and dirty into the nitty gritty details of marketing, selling and publishing.”
Confirmed speakers so far include: Ken Grant; Mark Power; David Solo; Laura El Tantawy; Amak Mahmoodian; Dragana Jurasic; Martin Parr; Krass Clement; Yumi Goto; Ivars Gravlejs; James Barnor. Tickets are £85, available at: http://www.photobookbristol.com/index.php/tickets
‘turn the page artist’s book fair’ will be held at The Forum, Norwich, Friday 24th and Saturday 25th June 2016. 10am – 6pm each day. Free Entry
Books… but not as you know them. ‘turn the page artist’s book fair’ is a UK and International exhibiting and selling platform for artists who are creating work that is inspired by the structural and conceptual properties of the book form.
Held over two days, ttp has established its place among the top UK Book Art events. Sculptural books, Altered Books, Limited Editions, Zines & Installations. http://turnthepage.org.uk
Holding / Held By the Book. Sheppard Room, University of Leeds, 1st July 2016. Keynote speaker: Sheena Calvert (University of the Arts). This one-day symposium considers what it means to hold a book as well as the continuing hold the book has upon its readers. Books come in many shapes and sizes, yet reading, as a process, often makes the book itself disappear. ‘Holding / Held By the Book’ recognises the material dimensions of book culture, but places these in dialogue with the idea of the book more broadly. The book has been many things over its long life and, with the emergence of the ebook, is changing once again. This symposium explores how the form of the book structures its status as privileged cultural object: what happens to the status of the book, it asks, at a time when the book is taking on new forms?
Registration for the symposium will open in May.
Interesting links
A new online collection at 23 Sandy Gallery: Letterpressed. A curated collection of artists’ books and broadsides from gallery inventory that use letterpress printing as the principal reprographic method. http://23sandy.com/works/product-category/curated-collections
From Carole Holden -The Beginning of Granary Books: An Interview with Steve Clay by William Corbett for The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/02/01/the-beginning-of-granary-books-an-interview-with-steve-clay/
From Helen Allsebrook – Noticed on the Guardian’s website: “Miniature milestone as Russian claims new record for world’s tiniest book”. Measuring 0.07 x 0.09mm, Vladimir Aniskin has done the delicate work ‘between heartbeats’ to create his tiny tome, about a flea’s shoes. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/02/miniature-milestone-as-russian-claims-new-record-for-worlds-tiniest-book-vladimir-aniskin
From the Center for Book Arts NY: 104. Buzz Spector speaks about his work in conjunction with the exhibition Buzz Spector: The Book Under (De-) Construction at The Center for Book Arts in NYC. Listen to the podcast at: http://www.bookbindingnow.com
New Artists’ Publications
The new issue of Uniformagazine is now available. No.5 Winter–Spring 2016.
Dividers Mark Pawson
Daisies Asleep, Daisies Awake John Bevis
Stonehenge Anon.
The Sea and The Trees Gavin Morrison
Bleaching Fields Centre spread
A Handmade Web J. R. Carpenter
Wartesaal Reinhard Mucha
Label Ian Hamilton Finlay
Descriptions of Literature Gertrude Stein
Monotone Press Eric Watier
Mark Pawson’s amiable description of domestic order that begins this issue might, in a way, suggest a prevailing interest in classification and placing. In 1981, John Bevis, whose essay about the Kearton daisy photographs is included here, made a small boxed work, in an edition of fifty copies: a rolled length of dymo-tape, pressed with a text seemingly concerned with the dilemma of labelling, commandeered from Arthur W. Clayden in his 1905 book Cloud Studies. It states: “There is always a danger that the use of any system of names based on types shall lead to the neglect of everything not typical”.
After four issues, the purpose of this magazine might seem to be to publish what is typical, that the gathering of articles is a matter of seeking similarities and commonality, whereas, it is also to do with looking out for what might be exceptions, the barely visible, and the improvised.
But not as much is hidden away nowadays, the online archiving of marginal and significant works and ephemera is vast and ever-expanding. Backwaters of pre-internet culture are documented in close detail, the obscure edges of one subject exposing others there beyond the periphery.
The sort of job that a printed quarterly might do in these times—to offer up thirty-odd pages of commentary and images every few months—is as unpredictable a prospect as ever. And the archetype for any publication focussed on sampling and variety is the Reader’s Digest, middlebrow and conservative, read and re-read in waiting rooms and lounges worldwide.
£4.00. Order online at: http://www.colinsackett.co.uk/uniformagazine.php
The Blue Notebook journal for artists’ books. Volume 10 No 2, Spring – Summer 2016
Articles:
In ‘The Four Guardians of the Sky’, Ousama Lazkhani discusses his artists’ books practice, multi-cultural inspiration, and techniques employed within printmaking, laser cutting and the artist’s book.
‘Why books? – From image to readable text’. Lina Nordenström of Grafikverkstan Godsmagasinet, reflects on twenty years as a printmaker and book artist working with visual language, a practice balancing on the edge between writing and drawing.
‘Arctica’. Stevie Ronnie – writer and multidisciplinary artist has been working on his ‘Arctica’ project for two years, producing multi-stranded work on the subject of climate change. He recounts his experience with the Arctic residency aboard the Barquentine Antigua and the book works made as a result of these travels.
Helen Scalway’s ‘Free Speech’ considers the artist’s book project ‘An Inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street’ within the context of recent history. Asking pertinent questions about freedom of speech particularly with respect to books and examining some of the background to the bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street, the street of booksellers in Iraq in March 2007.
Na’ama Zussman considers the artist’s book as authentic space evolving from an abstract entity into a concrete one; a place. The article delineates the degrees of that rhizomatic passage through two of British artist Sam Winston’s works, and reflects on similar structures which could be read as possible precursors for the artist’s book as a ‘Place’.
Artists’ pages by: Mark Addison Smith, Julia Borissova, Siobhán Britton, Friederike von Hellermann. Cover: Nancy Campbell
£10 for Volume 10 No.s 1 & 2, October 2015 and April 2016.
Price includes postage. Please order online.
MOUSE
Darren Marsh
MOUSE began life on the 1st January 2014. For each day that year a drawing was made in a diary using a ballpoint pen attached to a computer mouse. To fully realise the project the drawings have been re-presented as a book. Designed by Marsh, each is signed and authenticated with a unique performed drawing using the same process.
‘The mouse-pen assemblage serves as a bodily connection with a technology; a link between one’s actions and a machine. It becomes an instrument serving to implement and record by transcribing real-time gestures in an activity that is both commodity and production process. The digital and handmade co-exist; entities in symbiosis’.
‘A diary is a personal artefact, conventionally taken as a record of events and emotional experience. Technology is conversely considered to be detached from emotion and bodily expression. By bringing these positions together a new space is created’.
For further information on MOUSE visit http://www.darrenmarsh.co.uk/Books/MOUSE.htm or to view the full series of original drawings visit http://www.darrenmarsh.co.uk/vmsdiary/vmsdiary_index.html
29.7 x 21 cm, 374 pages, Hardbound foil blocked Wibalin cover, Digitally Printed on HP Indigo Press in the UK on Evolution uncoated 120gsm recycled paper. £87 + p&p. For enquiries contact@darrenmarsh.co.uk
Unicorn Histories
Mary Bartlett and Dmitry Sayenko
A sumptuous new artist’s book, Unicorn Histories is the result of a collaboration between Mary Bartlett (UK) writer, and Dmitry Sayenko (Russia) artist.
Handmade paper, layout, printing and binding by Dmitry Sayenko, linocuts 334 x 245 mm, hand set type: XX Century Condensed 22, Baskerville 36, Bodoni 46. Total edition: 18 numbered & signed copies. Completed February 2016. More details and images: http://www.nikodimpress.blogspot.ru
Dimitry
Julia Borissova
An incident that happened at the end of the 16th. century in Russia became a starting point for this work. Tsarevich Dimitry, the last son of Ivan the Terrible died under mysterious circumstances from a knife wound to his throat, people speculated on the possible various causes for his death. Historians are still trying to find the guilty party 400 years later in order to put an end to this confusing historical detective story.
I was intrigued by how images of the past can reform in our minds today. Is it possible to imagine the true picture of the world while knowing that so much information is distributed to manipulate people’s minds for political purposes? Despite conscious efforts to perceive information objectively, the brain generates myths that distort our logical thinking, making you conform to the ideas that are convenient for you.
Consequently, the myth becomes the very ‘reality’, in which people sincerely believe. Designed, printed and hand bound with hard cover by Julia Borissova, 145 x 190 mm, 88pp. 55 Euros. To order, visit: http://juliaborissova.ru
Sarah Bodman, Centre for Fine Print Research, UWE, Bristol.
Thank you very much for featuring my forthcoming exhibition at the University of Leeds. Most kind!