Each of the artists kindly agreed to make an edition of 100 bookmarks, the only stipulation was that the bookmark had to be 5cm x 18 cms to fit into the distribution box. Some artists made variable bookmarks within their editions; ’s folded and sewn bookmarks come in a range of colours, printed his edition on large sheets with additional painting before cutting them to make 100 individual images, punched from 1-100 throughout the set.
produced five sets of 20 bookmarks which, when assembled create a map of her home town (Cividale del Friuli) with the title Target.
The range of processes used for the bookmarks includes: digital print, painting, hand typeset, video image capture, paper engineering, sewing and embroidery, litho and screenprint.
’s You Are Here was printed on a working Adana press at the Industrial Museum in Bristol, the type design and pointing hand linking both her artist’s book practice and her interest in cycling, travels and signs.
has used his character version of the universal emergency exit sign from his Soteriology Project series (see www.andrewatkinson.net/#soteriology) to produce a flexo printed bookmark of redemption through reading.
Two artists from Middlesex University have also called upon the viewer to dive in; ’s Submerge Yourself and ’s Ink is Freedom/ Reading is Strength employ stark colours and bold typographic designs reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s propaganda posters printed for Lenin’s anti illiteracy drive in the early 20th Century. Flynn and Gossett both produced their bookmarks with die-cut design and letterpress.
’s Pardon Us bookmark has provided an antithesis to USA’s propaganda issues of the Iraq war, by offering profuse apologies from a sincerely opposed viewpoint.
has designed a miniature version of his Edo Kite, to be cut and constructed.
’s bookmarks have been meticulously sewn, painted and decoratively punched by hand.
has cut and folded individual sheets of coloured papers to create a beautiful series of colourful and architectural paper engineering bookmarks which will be instantly recognised as hers by anyone familiar with her artists’ books.
has taken video stills from his New York Dolls flip book series to make his bookmark a commentary on anonymity and the voyeurism of stranger watching in the city.
selected random texts from the backs of bestselling novels, using the reviewer’s quotes to generate a single letterpress printed bookmark sized sentence of unpunctuated, Kerouac style prose.
has been making a series of artworks based around the interior of Saint Mary Redcliffe Church in Bristol, built c. 800 years ago (see www.andreweason.com). His Firmament bookmark includes imagery taken from the gothic roof structure within the church. Eason explains his use of ancient texts as follows:
-
“Amongst other approaches, the religious connotation
was something I was interested in using. When I took the pictures of the
roof, the pattern of the roof bosses joining up the stonework seemed reminiscent
of diagrams from the Cabala-, which is, of course, a tradition within
Judaism. Much of the symbology within this system is based on the Hebrew
alphabet. I'm interested in the ways in which alphabets and cultures coexist
and evolve together, and I thought also of Alpha and Omega in Christian
symbolism, with its Greek alphabet, and the Celtic tree alphabets that
Robert Graves was so interested in. All of the words are the names of
various letters within different alphabets.
I wanted to suggest at once the symbiosis of language and mythologies within our shared culture, and visually map imagery of a religious building onto an imaginary night sky created from letters- hence Firmament. I wanted to depict, symbolically, a system more complex and chaotic than any one language, alphabet or culture.”
-
“entirely deliberate, I started with the idea of a bookmark that
would mark the book, the points where reading is discontinued, interrupted
etc. They use a screenprinted figure over a scanned background on transparent
plastic allowing text to form part of the landscape. The screenprint was
made with a specially blended oil-based ink, through a very heavy screen
mesh giving a good thick wedge of glistening, wet, smudgy, sticky, gooey,
ink.”
’s Lorem Ipsum bookmark also interferes with the text of any book in which it is placed, before it disintegrates entirely itself. Parraman first came across Lorem Ipsum text when cutting and pasting Letraset text for page layouts. As she explains:
-
“the scrambled text, was originally designed so
as not to distract viewers from a carefully designed layout. The text
is not random but has its roots in a piece of classical Latin literature
de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum
(The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. Lorem Ipsum
can now be generated on the Internet at http://www.lipsum.com/
I have used this site to generate a specific number of words that fits
precisely into the bookmark. I have printed the text onto clear acetate,
with the intention that the marker will become lost within the pages of
your book. The printed ink is also quite unstable, as you use the book
mark the text will wear away and possibly leave textual deposits on the
pages.”
return to the top of the page