Permanent Gallery and Bookshop, Brighton
Saturday 9 December 2006 - Sunday 14 January 2007
The Permanent Bookshop will temporarily move into the gallery this midwinter, occupying the space with a series of warming bookshop events. The first of these, 'Montage Over Britain', displays recent prints and montaged books by David Ferry.
David Ferry is a book-artist and printmaker working with classic picture-books of the British countryside, celebrating and subverting their original character with photomontaged embellishments. His new book-work - 'Britain in Colour with Belligerent Rock Intrusions mainly in Black and White' will be shown at The Permanent Bookshop on Friday 8 December, from 8pm.
Accompanying the show will be a unique collection of 45 contemporary books by artists, available for visitors to view. This collection has been especially selected for The Permanent Bookshop by Sarah Bodman, and includes the work of Jake Tilson, Yoko Ono, Sophie Calle and David Shrigley.
Sarah Bodman is Research Fellow for Artists Books, at UWE School of Art, Media and Design, Bristol. She edits and publishes both the Book Arts Newsletter, and the Artist's Book Yearbook.
Private view - Friday 8 December 2006, from 8pm
Artist talk - Saturday 6 January 2007, 4pm
Permanent Gallery & The Permanent Bookshop
20 Bedford Place, Brighton BN1 2PT
info@permanentgallery.com
www.permanentgallery.com
www.permanentbookshop.com
Open: Thurs/Fri/Sun 1pm - 6pm, Sat 11am - 6pm
Love at First Sight: How to build a collection of artists’ books without noticing.
The first artist’s book I bought was from a fellow student at our degree show, The Locomotive of History, Jonathan Hooper (1990). At £10 it seemed an amazing bargain after I had watched him devise and screenprint it in an edition of 10, over a period of about three months. Little did I realise then that this purchase would eventually lead to a collection of around 400 books and counting…
I am sure I didn’t set out to build a collection of artists’ books, I make my own - I am supposed to sell them, not buy them. After college I continued to study, and then work with artists’ books and subsequently in my job as Research Fellow for Artists’ Books at UWE, Bristol, I now do this all week; so I am surrounded by these wonderful things and constantly finding out more about them. I research and write about artists’ books, curate exhibitions, write and edit books, catalogues, a journal and newsletter, run projects and give lectures about them - in fact pretty much anything to do with promoting the subject of artists’ books. So of course, I was probably going to end up buying a few along the way.
I didn’t manage to get hold of the first artist’s book I had ever seen, Sisters of Menon by Susan Hiller (1983) until 10 years later, moving on from looking in any second-hand bookshop I entered, to using the Internet to track it down. Now the Internet makes buying artists’ books easy, too easy in fact – in November I bought a replacement copy of David Shrigley’s To Make Meringue… (at five times the price I had originally paid six years ago, I was missing it) I managed to do this whilst simultaneously dealing with someone’s phone enquiry- one click later, and it was mine via auto-ordering.
I don’t keep the collection all to myself though, I lend books out to other people for exhibitions like this one, use them for workshops and student access. Quite often, different parts of the collection will be on show in galleries, bookshops, and institutions around the world.
The books on show here at Permanent are a small selection from the collection and represent some of my old and new favourites from the past fifteen years. They range from larger editions, Exquisite Pain, Sophie Calle (Thames and Hudson, 2004) and The Terminator Line, Jake Tilson (Atlas Press, 1991) to intricately hand-produced works, The Thames pH book, Tracey Bush (2001) and Lucy May Schofield’s Love is Blind (2005).
There is no particular theme to my collection, other than love at first sight! The best thing about collecting artists’ books is that you can have your own copy of works by artists such as David Shrigley (numerous lovely publications, his most recent being This is a Paper Trinket for you To Wear) Tracey Emin (Holiday Inn), or Yoko Ono (Grapefruit) without having to spend a fortune. That can only be a good thing.
Research Fellow for Artists’ Books
Centre for Fine Print Research
University of the West of England, Bristol
Artists' Books on Show :
Sisters of Menon, Susan Hiller, Coracle/Gimpel Fils, London, 1983
The Locomotive of History, Jonathan Hooper, 1990
The Terminator Line, Jake Tilson, 1991
Rex Reason, Simon Patterson, Book Works, 1994
Kubla Can’t, Tony Kemplen, 1996
Aggressive Schoolbook Mark Pawson 1999
First I was Afraid, I was Petrified, Harland Miller, Book Works, 2000
A Violet Somnambulist Spiriting the Fugacious Bloom, Paul Etienne Lincoln, Christine Burgin, New York, 2000
Urban Fauna Information Station, Bill Burns, Trevor Gould, Mark Vatnsdal (Flock, Gaggle, Herd) 2003
The Thames pH book, Tracey Bush, 2001
DIY Joe Scanlan, Imschoot Uitgevers, 2002
Spring Snow – A Translation, Alison Turnbull, Book Works, London, 2002
Punch and Beauty, Mette Ambeck, 2002
A book of THE tree? a book of A tree, Kyoko Tachibana, 2003
Pivot, Helen Douglas / Thomas Evans, Weproductions, 2003
The Villages, Angie Waller, 2004
Good things or seventy-seven reasons to be still alive today, Mermaid Turbulence, Women, Eilis Kirby, 2004
Cover Version, Jonathan Monk, Book Works, 2004
The Outline of History, D.L. Olson, Art Metropole, 2004
Englshpublshing Colin Sackett, Coracle, 2004
The High Window, Emily Artinian, 2005
Grapefruit, Yoko Ono, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2000
Daily Twit No. 18 Mandrills, Magnus Irvin, 2005
Karen, Karen, 2006
Stolen White Goods, Savage, 2005
Come and See Before the Tourists Will Do – The Mystery of Transylvania, Gert and Uwe Tobias, 2005
Break Down Inventory, Michael Landy, Ridinghouse, London 2001
Concerning the Poetry of Lost Things (Harrow), John Bently, Liver & Lights No.27, 2001
Exquisite Pain, Sophie Calle, Thames and Hudson, 2004
Love Is Blind, Lucy May Schofield, 2005
The Anthrax Treatment Kit by Haliburton™, Gray Fraser, 2006
Where are you? A postman’s diary, Shaw and Shaw, 2005
Slaves of Christo, Julia Hall and Chrissy Leggio, ABC issue One, Booklyn, 2005
Karaoke, Masumi Shibata, Preacher’s Biscuit Books, 2005
Dog Dayz No. 1 The Summer of Glass Part I, Fly, 2005
Bio-autographic: scar issue Mike Nicholson, 2005
We're Sorry, Jackie Batey, Damp Flat Books, 2005
Censorship By Omission and the Economics Of Truth, Christian Brett, 2005
Beaut.e code Karen Hanmer, 2005
The Value-Form, Sharon Kivland, DomoBaal editions, 2006
Pheasant on the Crescent Tom Sowden, 2006
Err, David Shrigley, Book Works, 6th edition, 2005
Everybody is Suspicious, The Patriot Act Martina Groß and Hans-Christoph Koch, 2006
Mine Hilary Judd, 2006
Ordinary Curtains, Tate Shaw, 2006
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