| Latest Book Arts News:
October 2010 |
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| Frans Baake visits CFPR The Dutch artist Frans Baake visited CFPR on his way from Enschede to Twickenham on Friday 15th October, to show his books to students in our new book arts room. Frans is on a research trip looking at islands in the Thames for a new book. You can see his work at: www.fransbaake.nl
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| Birgit Skiöld Memorial
Trust Artist Book Award Congratulations to the Danish artist Mette-Sofie D. Ambeck! Ambeck was awarded the Birgit Skiöld Memorial Trust Artist Book Award at the London art Book Fair, Whitechapel Gallery, London 24-26 September 2010 for her artist's book Steam, Salt, Milk - a Nordic creation myth. Mette-Sofie D. Ambeck produced this laser cut and laser etched edition of her originally hand cut unique artist's book during a residency here at the Centre for Fine Print Research in July as one of the selected visiting artists for Tom Sowden's AHRC project: Paper Models: Investigating laser cutting technology to develop new artists’ books and paper-based creative practice for arts, crafts and design. Steam, Salt, Milk - a Nordic creation myth (2000) was originally made as a one-off artist's book, hand cut and burnt by the artist. An English translation of the Nordic creation myth, with text translation by the artist, typeset in DIN 9pt. Utilising the laser cutter and inkjet print during the one week residency, Ambeck was finally able to realise this beautiful artist's book as a limited edition. For more information on the artist and her work visit her website.
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Bookmarks VIII - Escaping the Library System 25th September 2010 - 25th February 2011 The Bookmarks projects series aim is to encourage appreciation of work in the format of the artist’s book. Participating artists each hand-produce an edition of 100 signed and numbered bookmarks to give away through distribution boxes at venues around the world. Each bookmark has the website address which brings visitors to the gallery of artworks online. Over the last six years the Bookmarks series of free artwork distribution has visited 60 library, gallery and bookstore venues around the world. Over 280 artists have contributed more than 28,000 bookmarks to the eight projects to date.     For Bookmarks VIII Escaping the Library System, it was library staff making them rather than distributing them. Quite a few of our previous bookmarks makers have been librarians, so we thought we would ask library workers to infiltrate some non-library venues with their own bookmarks. Bookmarks VIII includes 36 librarian artists or artists’ groups contributing 3,600 bookmarks from the UK, Ireland, Canary Islands, The Netherlands, Canada, and the USA. All of the bookmarks have been archived for the gallery section and are now online. Distribution is now taking place at 10 international venues, and online at www.bibliobuffet.com. See the list of venues.
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| An Inventory Of Al-Mutanabbi
Street - A Call To Book Artists From Beau Beausoleil 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. The Al-Mutanabbi Street Broadside Project has completed its call to letterpress printers after reaching a goal of 130 broadsides from 130 individual printers. Now the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition is issuing a call to book artists to work on a project to “re-assemble” some of the “inventory” of the reading material that was lost in the car bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street. We are asking book artists to join our project and further enhance the work of the Coalition by honouring al-Mutanabbi Street, by creating work that holds both “memory and future,” exactly what was lost that day. We ask that you create 3 books for the project, which is raising funds for Médecins Sans Frontières (website). If you would like to know more, or would like to join this project, please download the PDF for more information, and if you have any questions please just ask us, we would love to have you contribute to the project. We have 53 artists already, only 77 to go!
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| Al-Mutanabbi Street Letterpress Broadsides
Exhibition 14th October to 28th November 2010 A selection of broadsides is on show at Northern Print from 14th October to 28th November 2010 and will be auctioned to raise funds for the charity Médecins Sans Frontières. Northern Print Stepney Bank Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 2NP. Visit Northern Print for more information.
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| The Blue
Notebook Vol 5 No 1 October 2010 is now available Essays and Reviews in this issue: Doug Spowart: Every photo deserves a book: the rise of the photobook in contemporary self-publishing. The connections of photography with the book and the key drivers for the emergence of this new author/producer aspect of book making. Lorelei Clark: Making New Worlds: collaboration and its potential for transformation. Andrew Eason: On Making Reading. What is the nature of the relationship between book artists and the people they want to see their work? How does this compare to other versions of the relationship between books and their authors? Kasia Wlaszczyk reviews White Heat, at KALEID editions. Twenty-two artists from various professional backgrounds such as fine art, fashion, photography, book arts, printmaking, painting, interactive digital media and sculpture. Daniel Mellis reviews Detroit City Map by Kati Rubinyi, which presents a picture of modern day Detroit together with a skilfully disordered account of a 1943 race riot. Anastasia Denysenko gives an overview of Ukrainian artists’ books and a short introduction to the current state of book arts in Ukraine, featuring the works of several selected Ukrainian artists shown at the Museum of Book and Book Printing of Ukraine in March 2010. Sarah Jacobs presents an online 8-page piece, Apology Typology, which records a visit made to her e-book, Deciphering Human Chromosome 16: We Report Here. Artworks by Djeribi, Dr Book (aka Guy Begbie), Jo Moore, Colin Sackett and Klaus von Mirbach. Cover, badge and sticker design: Angela Callanan To subscribe at £10 GBP per annum, please visit our Blue Notebook page.
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| Natalie McGrorty USA
travel report Our wonderful book arts intern spent the first part of the summer holidays assisting at Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York, with their Photo-Books symposium and summer institute. Natalie then headed to New York City to visit collections, galleries, artists’ groups, centres and organisations for research towards her thesis and final project for her third year on the Drawing and Applied Arts course here at Bower Ashton. Natalie's visit was supported by The Gane Trust, which awarded her a travel grant towards her airfare and train travel. Natalie has written a report of her adventures with books, which can be downloaded. 
USA travel report
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| Book Arts Newsletter :
how do you read yours? Now that we have switched to online PDF downloads of the Book Arts Newsletter, some readers have been printing theirs out to read on paper wherever they choose, on the bus, train, in the garden, studio etc The image here is from Klaus von Mirbach in Mönchengladbach, Germany who sent his photo with an email saying: 'Since the newsletter has switched to online, I now print it out and make a book out of it: perfect binding, soft or hard covers. And then the BAN is always in or nearby my workplace, and here it is now, on the table in my studio.' If you would like to email an image of where you like to read your copy of the BAN, we will add it to our forthcoming Book Arts Newsletter gallery. Email images and your text to 
Sarah.Bodman@uwe.ac.uk
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| Regenerator
II: Altered books project Online archive and permanent displays The Regenerator II project launched in February 2010, with artists choosing their books from a list of withdrawn books, to return by July 2010. 57 altered books were returned from artists in Australia, the UK, Belgium, Germany and Norway, to be documented and photographed for the online archive. The books are now on permanent display as part of Bower Ashton Library’s artists’ books collection, where they can be viewed and handled. Many thanks to illustration student Alice Potter for displaying the books in the library. A big 'thank you' to all the artists who took part in this project and generously donated their altered books to the library’s collection. We know these books will be enjoyed by students, staff and visitors for many years to come. The book here is On Landscape by Jill Hillman, UK. You can now view all of the books online or visit the library to see them in situ.
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| Dinner and
a Rose Sarah Bodman and Nancy Campbell have completed a new artist’s book for the University of Dundee’s AHRC funded project Poetry Beyond Text: Vision, Text and Cognition, which commissioned new work as part of an exploration into how readers respond to visual aspects of poetry. As Nancy explains, their tribute to Patricia Highsmith's Ripley quartet, 'took 'the talented Mr Ripley' from being a small time fraudster in New York to millionaire murderer in the beauty spots of Europe. Ripley's victims stand in the ways of his appetite for the good life, epitomised by chicken in aspic, champagne, lobster, celeri remoulade and sole veronique.' After hosting a dinner party at which the meals and liqueurs mentioned in the book were served, Nancy created texts around Highsmith's work and the conversation and Sarah photographed a documentary of Ripley’s mise en place and dining experiences. They have sent the first 3 copies to Dundee for the project’s exhibition, which launches in January, and will launch the book at the Manchester Artist’s Book Fair and the Small Publishers Fair, London in November. Sarah and Nancy have decided to turn their food/book collaboration into an annual event, with a free download artist's book and video next year, which will be a tribute to Douglas Coupland. The meal will be based on the fictional novel On Glove Pond, featured in Coupland’s The Gum Thief. Anyone who has read the book will know that there will be a lot less cooking involved next time. |
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Read more about the project on Nancy Campbell’s website: http://nancycampbelle.blogspot.com/2010/08/way-to-murderers-mind-is-through-his.html
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| Bristol Artist's
Book Event at Arnolfini Saturday 30th April and Sunday 1st May 2011 11am - 6pm Saturday and 11am - 5pm Sunday Arnolfini, in collaboration with The Centre for Fine Print Research at the University of the West of England, Bristol, is pleased to announce the third Bristol Artist's Book Event at Arnolfini. All the stands are now fully booked. This will take place on Saturday 30th April and Sunday 1st May 2011 with stands over the galleries and auditorium space of Arnolfini. Arnolfini is one of Europe’s leading centres for the contemporary arts, has one of the best arts bookshops in the country and a stylish, lively café bar. This will be a great opportunity to show work to a new audience and meet with other artists and publishers. There will also be free 'book surgeries', workshops with Guy Begbie and Stephen Fowler, tours of the event, with Tanya Peixoto of bookartbookshop and Julian Warren / Snoozie Claiden of Arnolfini, also exhibitions of books including Follow-Ed, and events such as Lucy May Schofield’s Bibliotherapy running over the weekend. We hope you can make it and look forward to seeing you! Peter Begen, Sarah Bodman, Tom Sowden and Julian Warren
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