| Book Arts News: Autumn 2003 | • |
Current Book Arts Exhibition |
| • |
Notes & Letters Received | |
| • |
News Archive |
Bristol School of Art, Media and Design, UWE Bristol:
3rd November 2003 - 7th December 2003
John Dilnot Books
Producing books, prints and other printed matter has been the dominant and lasting activity in my practice since leaving art school almost 20 years ago.
My interest is in nature and landscape and our modern relationship with it. How we perceive it and re-invent our perception of it. And how we physically alter and manipulate it.
Books are often formed from collections of found material. The accumulated imagery could be for example my own photographs (as in the Urban Tree series) or it could be food packaging imagery (as in English Homes and 15 Cows).
Amongst recent work is an ongoing series titled 'Urban Trees'. These books are being compiled from a growing collection of photographs of 'urban trees' I started taking in the early 1980's.
These books are being arranged in themes, for example 'Boundaries' features photographs of trees which are either reacting in some way to a fence or wall (by destroying it, growing around it or through it) or the boundary may be reacting to the tree, (for example double yellow lines steering to avoid curb side trees).
Others in this series are 'Space', 'Communication', 'Attachments', 'Spanish Urban Trees' and 'January' which consists of discarded Christmas trees found in the streets of Brighton during January 1999.
Books are printed using any available method that seems appropriate, including screen-printing, stencils, rubber stamps, letterpress, photocopy, inkjet.
I am currently working on a modest volume entitled Retrospective to commemorate 20 years of book works. Despite the big word it will be a characteristically small book with a double page dedicated to every book I have ever published. There will be a description, a photographic image of each book and a facsimile page from each book.
John Dilnot
John Dilnot’s art is the expression of an intensely urban and industrial society, obsessed by its agrarian past. For better or for worse, this is a characteristic that has informed our culture for the last 150 years. From the perspective of great industrial cities, the rural idyll has always provided a form of mental escapism. Memories of past agricultural squalor, hardship and poverty have been suppressed in favour of the classic archetype of England, as pastoral Never Never Land. Through the period of the 20th century imperial and economic decline this sense of a retreat into a fantasy as a panacea for contemporary reality has become ever more pronounced. John Dilnot’s work captures this spirit with poignant and often searing accuracy.
It would be quite wrong, however, to locate John Dilnot within the English Romantic tradition. He is essentially an urbanist. He is an artist of the ‘out of town’ supermarket, the claustrophobic housing estate, the urban fringe. It is within these environments that the rural mirage is at its most seductive – and it’s most insidious. It creeps into wallpaper, domestic ornament, mass packaging.
Dilnot’s art takes it’s cue from the central irony that for many people, their daily encounter with the ‘natural’ may be through the medium of industrial mass- production, through consumerism and marketing. His work has the capacity to be as seductive as the products that are behind their inspiration. But the viewer is lulled into a false sense of security. Colours clash and disturb, repeated images are obsessive, nervous to the point of hysteria. A darkness seems to lurk in the woods, beyond the hill, behind the cottage door. In this artist’s world, rural dreams are disrupted and have a habit of turning into urban nightmares.
Exhibition in the Artists' Books Study Area at the Library
Bristol School of Art, Media and Design, UWE Bristol:
22nd September – 2nd November 2003
Recent works by Kate Farley
The books I make often begin as a series of drawings, often representing landscapes I am travelling through. Ideas and drawings are combined with folding and binding to make books. Themes vary from investigating a sense of place, journeys and states of mind. On a physical level, I enjoy the potential of a sheet of paper which can be transformed to address any number of issues through its structure and relationship to image. The use of drawing is important to me, enabling me to develop ideas in to print, creating small editions of books.
To find out more about the artist and for more, larger images, visit the Artist' Book Exhibitions pages
Recent works
1Along the Lines
The search for summer sun and a day out at the sea-side resulted in Along the Lines. Drawings from the train show the journey, leaving the city and arriving at the coast. The destination, Burnham-on-Sea is represented by three red stripes as found on the sea defences and the lighthouse as well as the beach hut on stilts! The book consists of a lino printed strip, folded and slotted to a background.
Edition of 20 (14 x 30 cms approx.)
2 Inside-out
A flat sheet folded and relief printed to suggest the complexity and awkwardness of self-awareness.
Edition of 20 (30 x 40 cms open - 8 x 8 cms closed)
3 Bloom
Drawings from train journeys between London, my present home and Norwich, my family home, were the starting point for this book. Following a bicycle accident resulting in an operation to wire my broken left elbow and a stay in hospital, Bloom has been the outcome of both a physical and emotional journey. The exterior of the folded structure consists of a sequence of black and white lithographic images of the train journey; there and back, also considering the complex act and definition of “leaving home”. Four individual sections extend to reveal the inside of the book. Freesias are screenprinted in two pinks depicting the delicate balance of life and the emotional and physical effects of a single moment. The night after the surgery I drew the flowers that were given to me while in hospital. Printed with one broken elbow, this has been the measure of my healing. Lithography and screenprinted and folded (8.5 x 14.5 cms) book.
Edition of 20
4 Coastline
Coastline is a book celebrating the coast of the British Isles. The main text is the statistic of how many centimetres per person there is of the coastline for England, Wales and Scotland. The screenprinted book has a line drawn map of my favourite bit of coast running across the pages from start to finish. Images are of things found at the beach including seaweed and chip forks and there are some names from the shipping forecast.The book is sewn as a single section pamphlet, in the shape of a tide-timetable booklet.
Edition of 30 (12 x 5.5 cms)
Exhibition in the Artists' Books Study Area at the Library
Bristol School of Art, Media and Design, UWE Bristol:
19th August - 21st September 2003
Camberwell Book Arts MA
This exhibition looks at the diverse range of work produced on the Book Arts MA at Camberwell College of Art over the past year. The students are encouraged to explore the role and identity of the artist's book and to push the boundaries of what constitutes a book. From those that are letterpress printed to ceramics, from performance art to games. Mediums and methods of working are investigated within and outside of the book format. Each student spends the year developing one project from proposal to exhibition, and this series of books are a range of examples from each student produced along this path.
Deborah Kirk
An Anthology of Lights: pure, polished, loose leaf lights. Extracted from the residue of my walking through London, this collection is about focussing on the city in a different way, concentrating on objects in a way that isolates them from the clutter of information that is the modern city. Image is a journey, anchored in words, and the whole is a poem: the images can only be read in light of the words, and the words can only be read in light of the images. Works from the City Languages series pull lights and shadows out of the city and force the viewer to look again, to look for purely visual reasons, not for information.
Elaine Worth
In my present work I am exploring the conscious and unconscious games we play as we adopt our different roles in social and family situations. Looking at the rules, strategies and transactions that operate in these situations. As well as the mapping and projection that goes on in these situations. How we project our games onto others, as well as having them projected onto us. I have been using the metaphor of the game to explore 'games people play'.
Helen Ward
Using images of a Marilyn Monroe paper doll kit, this book explores society's collective memory of woman. Through the act of remembrance (Monroe's outfits) & the act of play (the book includes a mini Monroe paper doll) the reader can at once control process of Monroe/woman's changing appearance. The reader can also play at being that archetypal woman expected through collective memory, as each paper outfit has it's face cut out - look through Monroe's eyes & be the perfect woman!
Kin-wah Tsang
People only show you one side of things but why do they show you this and not the other? Are things simple or do they just appear like this? Questioning those accepted, believed and favoured ideas, rules and norms, in my opinion, helps to open a space for re-examining the neutrality and normality of the ideas and things that we have taken for granted or which have been imposed and educated by the others and the society. This also helps us to look and think from a different perspective or angle that we may have missed or ignored.
Kyoko Tachibana
1 book art is culture
2 culture is about doing and making things for yourself (at least)
3 my projects are set to find my own way from where I am to where I'm going
4 home is where I am and publishing is the destination
5 (subjective) objective = book art
a) subjective = home, objective = publishing
b) subjective = home of the book, objective = home for the book
Lucy Badrocke
The power of the word over the body and the visual status of letters are the basis for the work 'spells'. The work is a collection of 26 letterpress cards, one for each letter of the alphabet, presented as a triangle. Each word is repeated less one letter each time until reaching the words first letter, which holds the meaning and power of the word. The letters are a constellation in the space of the page, indented on the paper the physical nature of text highlights the interaction between the reader and the text, the body and the word.
Tom Sowden
This work is an exploration into the space that is the motorway. It is primarily about the mental state whilst travelling a monotonous route, introspection and interaction, loneliness and being detached. Each of the books is documentation of a low key performance executed on the coach. These are performed for an audience of varying numbers who do not interact and more often than not do not know of their participation in the work. The book is the output for the performance, retaining the sequence and the narrative and physically engaging the viewer. Whilst remaining the intimate object that must be travelled through in order to be understood.
Choi Chun Hei
| • | Back to current newspage |