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Book Arts |
The ABYB is a biennial reference publication focusing on international activity in the field of book arts. It serves as a resource for artists, academics, students, collectors, librarians, dealers, publishers and researchers, in fact anyone interested in artists’ books!
The next issue for 2018-2019 will be published in Autumn 2017. You can list your books or organisation etc. free of charge until 30th May 2017 by downloading and returning the listings form here.
The biennial publication includes essays and information on many aspects of the book arts, artists’ listings, information on book arts galleries, archives and collections, book arts courses, events, journals, bibliographies and reference publications, studios and websites, with book arts contributors from around the world.
The Booknesses Colloquium on the Book Arts in South Africa will be held at the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA), University of Johannesburg, South Africa on 24 & 25 March 2017 alongside South African artists’ books in an exhibition of contemporary bookworks in conventional and digital form opening on Friday 24 March 2017 in the FADA Gallery.
Keynote speakers for the colloquium are Sarah Bodman and Robbin Ami Silverberg, artist & founding director of Dobbin Mill hand-papermaking studio and Dobbin Books collaborative artist book studio in Brooklyn, NY, and Associate Professor at the Pratt Institute.
The colloquium and FADA exhibition of South African book arts will be accompanied by the hugely important exhibition Booknesses: Artists’ Books from the Jack Ginsberg Collection, opening at the UJ Art Gallery on Saturday 25 March 2017. This exhibition will be one of the largest and most comprehensive exhibitions of book art ever staged in the world with over 250 works by international as well as local book-arts practitioners. The exhibition is accompanied by a full-colour catalogue with essays by Prof. Pippa Skotnes, Prof. Keith Dietrich, Robbin Ami Silverberg, Prof. Kim Berman and David Paton who is the exhibition curator. The catalogue will add new scholarship to our understanding of the book arts in South Africa.
Image: Jack Ginsberg, whose collection has inspired the exhibition Booknesses: Artists’ Books from the Jack Ginsberg Collection.
For more information visit: http://www.theartistsbook.org.za and https://www.facebook.com/Booknesses-Book-Arts-Exhibitions-Colloquium-548266288693065
This event is one of many 10th Anniversary Readings for al-Mutanabbi Street taking place internationally over 4th and 5th March 2017, from Australia to Iraq, Paris to Quebec.
On March 5th 2007, a car bomb was exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. Al-Mutanabbi Street is in a mixed Shia-Sunni area. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded. Al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic centre of Baghdad bookselling, holds bookstores and outdoor bookstalls, cafes, stationery shops, and even tea and tobacco shops. It has been the heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community. Beau Beausoleil, poet and bookseller – founder of The Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition, has been working since that day in order to establish a dialogue in solidarity with al-Mutanabbi Street.
Our event in Bristol will have readings by Ama Bolton, Angie Butler and others.
A selection of artists’ books and broadsides produced for the project will also be on display. The event will run from 12.30-1.30pm, with a half-hour programme of readings and discussion from 12.45pm – 1.15pm to mark the 10th anniversary of al-Mutanabbi Street.
This event is free, all welcome.
Gallery space (Entrance from Bridewell Street, 1st Floor) The Island, Nelson Street, Bristol, BS1 2LE, UK. We regret that the 1st floor space areas are not accessible to wheelchair users. http://theislandbristol.com/spaces/gallery-space/
Any questions, contact Sarah Bodman:
Download the event poster here.
The image here is of John Bently’s artist’s book made for An Inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street. More information on the project
It’s back! The sixth biennial festival of artist book making, featuring the work of bookmakers and small presses from around the world. Since 2007, BABE has established a great reputation as a relaxed and friendly event to meet and chat to book artists about their work and buy works of art. With more than 80 makers taking part, and prices start from just a few pounds, there will be something for everyone.
We have performances, interventions, talks and workshops across the weekend with BookCasePress and Bristol Print Collective, surgeries with Simon Goode of London Centre for Book Arts, performances and readings in the dark studio, interventions by Collective Investigations. Stephen Fowler’s Passport office will be issuing passports for 50 visitors each day, to collect stamps as they go around the venue.
Featuring 95 artists from all over the UK, Ireland, The Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Norway and South Korea:
Come and celebrate our 10-year anniversary with us!
BABE will take place on Saturday 1st April and Sunday 2nd April 2017 with stands over the ground and first floor galleries and auditorium space of Arnolfini. See the full programme here.
For 2017, out tribute is to all the weird and wonderful, scientific and practical, believing and sceptical endeavours recorded in publications about the Loch Ness Monster – hence the apt title of BOOK ISH NESS created by Linda Parr.
On 10th March 2017, a research party of 13 members met at Fort Augustus, Scotland. The Loch Ness Investigation Bureau (officially formed in 1961 closed in 1972) was rebooted in early 2017 after a myriad of monster sightings in lakes, rivers and seas from Denmark and Sweden, to Germany and even in Minnesota, USA.
The LNIBR research team had five days in which to conduct their investigation of Loch Ness, keeping watch by day and night. A fortunate encounter with the naturalist and Loch Ness researcher Adrian Shine of The Loch Ness Project in Drumnadrochit offered insights for the team’s quest and is acknowledged with grateful thanks for the sharing of his expertise.
The investigation report is supplemented by the many sightings recorded and printed in the publication. These sightings were sent in by individual witnesses and will over time be validated by stringent testing by the LNIBR. Alongside this photographic evidence, we will publish for the first time, a bibliography of new editions on the subject of the Loch Ness Monster sent in by authors and the general public.
The ‘BOOKISHNESS’ publication will launch at Bristol Artist’s Book Event (BABE) 1st and 2nd April 2017 at Arnolfini, Bristol, UK. A copy of the publication will be sent to each contributor, the remaining 35 copies will be available to purchase at £5 each. A video will launch on World Book Night, 23/04/17.
Volume 11, No.2, Spring – Summer 2017, essays and articles include: In ‘Damp-in-Ditchwater: A satirical staged narrative revealed through an artist’s book’ Dr Jackie Batey, explores the balance of text and image in a multi-layered exploration of the absurdity of everyday life, and posits an alternative to the crude polemic in making criticisms of the role that industry plays in the life of the community. Damp in Ditchwater seeks to create an editorial strategy that takes its position on the cusp between an overt polemic, and the often ephemeral nature of much visual humour. Omiros Panayides introduces us to contemporary artists’ publishing practice in Cyprus, through curating contributions from four local independent artists/publishers working with independently printed and published forms of speech and image.
In ‘Unconventional narratives’, Otto presents his personal alternatives to conventional narratives, as explored in his practice as book artist and illustrator, from his first book ‘Helping you back to work’ to recent experiments with format and content. Nancy Campbell interviews book artist Ken Campbell, discussing his new publication, ‘You all know the words’, and the signal works created during 40 years of artistic activity. Campbell recalls his wartime childhood in the East End of London and its influence on his way of seeing, and describes how his early books emerged in the punk culture of the 1970s as a synthesis of his interests in graphic design, fine art and poetry. Noëlle Griffiths reflects on her part in the RE-TAKE/RE-INVENT project featuring fifteen artists responding to the art collection at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. Each artist interpreted their chosen artwork from the critical standpoint of their current studio practice. Noëlle Griffiths selected a painting by John Hoyland to examine her own creative process making a series of paintings and related artists’ books.
Artists’ pages by: Marian Crawford, Daniel Lehan, Ton Martens, Philippa Wood.
Cover design: Tom Sowden.
Available to order online here.
Next summer we will be moving to a new room on campus. Help us clear our shelves by filling yours up! We have made two bundles available: Two randomly selected back issues of the Artist’s Book Yearbook for a bargain £10 and five randomly selected back issues of The Blue Notebook journal for artists’ books for a bargain £10! Both available on the online store.
This exhibition is on tour as part of the ongoing al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition projects. The online Inventory gallery was launched to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street on 5th March 2012, for which project partners around the world held commemorative readings and events. Since then the Inventory has grown as artists’ books created for the project have arrived. The gallery pages show images and information for each of the 260 books completed for the project.
Exhibitions since the launch of the tour include:
The Westminster Reference Library, Westminster, UK; The Powell Library Rotunda, UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA; Salt & Cedar Letterpress Studio, Detroit, Michigan, USA; The Cambridge Arts Council, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA; The Santa Fe University of Art and Design, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA; The John Rylands Library, Manchester, UK; The San Francisco Center for the Book, San Francisco, California, USA; Gallery Route One, Point Reyes, California USA; the Center for Book Arts, New York in association with Alwan for the Arts, Columbia University Libraries Butler Library, International Print Center New, Poets House, New York, USA; Literary & Philosophical Society Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK; Collins Memorial Library, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington, USA; Curry College, Milton, Massachusetts, USA; American University in Cairo, Egypt; Arab – British Centre, London, UK; The Mosaic Rooms, London, UK; Kate Chappell ’83 Center for Book Arts at the University Of Southern Maine, USA; The Hague Public Library, The Netherlands; Queen Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada; Jaffe Center for Books Arts, Florida Atlantic University, USA; Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County, Rochester, New York, USA; Goddard College, Vermont, USA; Arab American National Museum, Dearborn/Detroit, Michigan, USA; Idaho Center for the Book in partnership with The Arts and Humanities Institute at Boise State University, USA; George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA; Herron School of Art and Design, The Herron Art Library of IUPUI University library, USA; Keats House and the Iraqi Cultural Centre, London; the Arab American National Museum, Dearborn, USA;
Idaho Center for the Book in partnership with The Arts and Humanities Institute at Boise State University; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here DC 2016 a partnership between George Mason University’s School of Art and George Mason University Libraries, Split This Rock, Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, McLean Project for the Arts, Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at The George Washington University, Busboys and Poets, Georgetown University, Cultural DC, Smithsonian Libraries, Brentwood Arts Exchange, Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Northern Virginia Community College, George Mason University Student Media and Fourth Estate Newspaper.
Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here: Transcendent Hope an exhibition organised by Art Hazelwood and Katherine Connell of the Rosenberg Library is on show until 13th April 2017 at the Madeleine Haas Russell Gallery, Rosenberg Library, City College of San Francisco, USA.
