| Book Arts News: Summer 2003 | • |
Current Book Arts Exhibition |
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Notes & Letters Received | |
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News Archive |
Faculty of Art, Media and Design, UWE Bristol:
Impact
Impact 2003:
School of Fine Art, Rhodes University and the University of Cape Town, in Cape Town, South Africa
The conference, which is due to take place in August in South Africa, is likely to have significant social and political implications, although how these issues affect the conference, will be based on the profile and balance of delegates and speakers. If you cannot attend, it would be useful if you could contribute to the debate.
This exhibition, specially coordinated for Impact, is entitled DO-DONÕT/ CAN-CANÕT and investigates the global problem of rights of access and freedom of movement. In most countries, individuals can move around the country with relative ease. However rights of access, freedom to roam, self-expression, are becoming imperceptibly but increasingly reduced. Fears about protection, security, possible damage to property and land are often given as an excuse. Therefore where citizens can go, how they are manoeuvred, boundaries or areas that are patrolled or where one has no right of access, methods of control and capturing movements are becoming increasingly insidious in implementation.
Walking, for example, is the one of the more popular outdoor recreations in Britain. However the most beautiful areas of the country are owned by a handful landowners who have over the years, vandalised the land, restricted or removed footpaths, or made rights of access more difficult by discouraging people (dangerous animals, barbed wire, signs suggesting instant death). The recent Ôfoot and mouthÕ incident that affected the nations country gave rise to a near ban on any use of footpaths and countryside pursuits. Please send images of, for example, signs, notices or views that you think might reflect these issues. Furthermore, whilst not wanting to dwell on the negative, we would also welcome images that facilitate our enjoyment, or some of the more ludicrous or bizarre sights/signs that you might have come across.
Specifications:
The exhibition is open to all artists interested in contributing to a visual debate. The image(s) can be in the form of a photograph, Xerox, Polaroid, advert, notice, sign, text from a charter or bill, or handout, which illustrates these ideas. The images can be sent to UWE. All the images will be scanned, positioned in a rectangular and square grid format and printed on 1.5m wide banners, which will be hung around the IMPACT conference area. All the work will be shown on the UWE website. Potentially if we receive contributions from a variety of countries, the cultural perspectives would provide a rich resource for a very visual exhibition. We look forward to hearing from you.
Centre for Fine Print Research
Deadline for images: 20th July 2003
For return of images please enclose an addressed and suitably sized envelope.
Please send images to:
Carinna Parraman or Paul Laidler marking the envelope: Impact3
Or e-mail images to: print.research@uwe.ac.uk with subject heading: Impact3
Please visit the this website for an update of images later in the year
Carinna Parraman
Senior Research Fellow
e-mail: Carinna.Parraman@uwe.ac.uk
University of the West of England
http://www.impact2003.uct.ac.za
| Exhibition in the
Artists' books display area at the Library Faculty of Art, Media and Design, UWE Bristol: 7th July - 18th August 2003 Guy Begbie Book Works A mapping process in a city locality often becomes the starting and finishing point for Guy Begbie's book works. For more information and larger images, see 'Artist' books exhibitions page' Walking routes as research lead to a point where literally and conceptually the place becomes a matrix. Two dimensional basic A to Z maps are enlarged and transformed into three dimensional representations through a process of screenprinting, routering, vacuum moulding and casting in paper, plaster and lead. In some cases the resulting 3D artifacts are then scanned and screen printed as colour separations for the page.    In the act of reading maps, one may prompt a familiar fleeting pang of recognition making a place quantifiable by recalling it through personal memory. Maps have an intertextual dimension where meaning can cross boundaries of place. In Begbie's book "Inside / Outside / This Place / That Place" blurring the parameters of the built environment, the double spread in the centre of the book visually blends the interior space of a building with the landscape of its exterior. Other pages in this book draw parallels between the landscape and the formal book structure. Map casts are a common factor in Guy Begbie's books and architectural book structures. These have the irregular edge or perimeters of the found fragment or shard. This characteristic serves to emphasise the lack of a frame where meaning runs off the edge into a void where anything can happen in an abstract space that lies beyond the self-containment of the urban environment. Given the material similarity to the excavated artefact or shard, the cast map alludes to the revealing of historical layers inherent within the city.    The "Redcliffe Effigies" series of artists' books reference the found artefact or fabricated map cast. Researching the archives to investigate the nature of archaeological excavation in a specific city location, the artist has examined the way histories are interpreted and constructed in an attempt to define the notion of time and place both real and imagined. These books present photographic documentation of a specific public building as digital film stills combined with archaeological and pared down descriptive texts evoking thoughts on observing and being observed in a city environment. These works use the both the intimate and formal compositional structure of the book imbued with objective fact and a subjective poetic attempt to record the ephemeral moment of a specific time and place.     Redcliffe effigies 2000, open edition Through an interdisciplinary practice, Guy Begbie attempts to constantly redefine the parameters of the book, making printed editioned artists' books, unique mixed media books, sculptural book objects and site specific book works made to enable the viewer to engage with time based elements, through the use of digital sound and the moving image. Using book structures, Begbie's work is produced as an investigation of -relationships between geographical location, the built environment, its inhabitants and cultural production. The mapping process in "Redcliffe Effigies" concentrates on an area within the locality of a city centre, a public space. However with journeys delineated with poured paint mediums onto the cast map roads, the artist intending to set up a discourse, made detours on the defined routes from the public space leading to a domestic, more private residential space in another part of the city. In the series "Domestic Interiors" Begbie presents photographic documentation of specific sites or fixtures within the rooms of the house he and his family live in. These digital Stills are sequenced with pages containing dry architectural quotes and minimal descriptive texts evoking the artists' collective experience of ten years of living in this building. He has an intimate knowledge of its more recent history, fabric, structure and links to the outside world. The connection between his memory and this house is fundamental to aspects of a domestic tradition and popular values.    After shooting video and writing texts that both document fixtures and describe the experience of being in familiar domestic rooms, the artist uses this inventory to prepare moulds and make actual casts of architectural details. The collection of casts present the possibility to make the physical private realities of the house public. The resulting 3D casts have been digitally scanned and then resourced for a series of printed artists' books in which pared down texts appear presented in column layouts, an oblique poetic cross referencing. The actual location of a particular building within the artists' experience has variable contexts given the transient nature of journeys between the building and elsewhere. A governing time based book structure immediately imposes implications of past histories, the here and now of the present and a projected prognosis for the future. The direct poignant experience of a specific place in the artists' memory is a collective layering of incident and the fleeting moment. In works such as 'Portus Abonae' text resonates within the painterly imagery in a non-linear narrative. As a distillation of experience, this work in a filmic frame by frame format and the other artists' books in this series, aim to capture the fleeting moment, the equivalent of a visual haiku. When interpreting an architectural structure through site-specific practice, the artist engages with the formal aspects of that built environment. Codex book form structures historically have very formal attributes. While many of his books are sewn along one edge, using traditional binding techniques, Begbie makes other unique works, folded paper engineered forms and architectural book structures that parody the codex book format, combining paper and cloth based bindery materials with cast elements in plaster, beeswax and lead. These sculptural book objects make reference to methods in which to examine appropriate parallels between both the traditional book and architectural structures. Conceptually they investigate ways in which the book form may hold and contain the experience of buildings and the landscape. Digital stills and video provide Guy Begbie with raw source material to be edited and used in the context of the physical codex book format with additional texts or to be shown as projected autonomous video shorts. In works such as "House of Memory", both in its book and video short form, contemporary footage of a specific place is often intercut with footage of traditional notions of that particular landscape. This is achieved through historical re-enactment and footage of details of historical paintings depicting the chosen location, a process that evokes the passage of time in relation to the geographical space. Compositionally the video works explore formats of the book utilising text mimicking the page and placing sound as a structural device between image and text. As in the case of 'BS6 6HR Domestic Interior" where traditional notions of landscape are challenged as the fields of sound and image trace the activated mechanism of the book.  Both books and the moving image are time based, a moving image may be activated through the simple device of a flip book. In video works as in the actual book a process of re-reading or reviewing a passage (of time) becomes possible through the use of repetition in editing. The video bookwork activation "Reading Writing" was made to enable the viewer to engage with time based elements of the book experience. Through the use of digital sound and the moving image, "Reading Writing" documents the passage of hand and eye through a cryptic narrative over a sequence of pages.  Begbie's Recent works return to the use of shooting video as starting point to produce a bound document. The detachment from the population of a familiar public environment or locality has been replaced by people watching in an unfamiliar city. The "New York Dolls" series of flip books (detail above) provoke pertinent questions about issues of anonymity, surveillance, voyeurism and the fleeting moment. Repetition in the editing of single frames has produced choreographed momentary movement which has been translated into a cinematic flip book structure. Using combinations of a multi disciplinary practice Guy Begbie challenges and constantly redefines the shifting parameters of the book form through interpretations alluding to landscape, the manmade geography of the city, and the inside and outside of its public and domestic architectural structures. Exhibition in the Artists' books display area at the Library Faculty of Art, Media and Design, UWE Bristol: 19th May - 6th July David Kirby Paperboy Press Licking Grit From a Polished Floor Over the last few years, as earning a crust has eaten into my time for developing new work, some of my books have undoubtedly become more superficial. Others have had an extended gestation, but that's no bad thing. In no particular order: "Camarata" is one that has been stewing for a number of years, gradually becoming more refined through the shedding of anxieties about what it was intended to do, and what the viewer would make of it. I am still not completely satisfied with it, but its about time it saw the light of day. "Veneer" was produced for the Artist's Book Year Book, 2001/2002, and uses that publication as a location to disseminate a text that is now permanently locked in its ceramic and resin cases. "Free-ad Poetry" is another idea based on the same theme. Classified adverts are placed in our local 'Free-ads' paper in the form of poems. Or poems are placed in our local 'Free-ads' paper in the form of classified adverts. Result? (mostly) free publishing. (They sometimes get spotted and rejected...!)    "Suite for Bob Cobbing" was produced shortly after I read of his death in the 'Wire' magazine. I first saw him perform at the London Artist's Book Fair at the Barbican in 1996 or '97. Sadly I never said anything more intelligible or intelligent to him than "I really admire your work", which roughly translates as "I wish I had the balls, integrity and vision to perform the way you do". Nevertheless these images were a spontaneous response to the passing of a mightily impressive artist. "Urban Wildlife" is a whimsical meditation based on the song by Tom Lehrer, "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park". It goes no deeper than that. The "Silt" series ran as an occasional magazine for a couple of years. The format was designed to allow myself and a couple of other people to produce work, simply as a way of keeping our hand in while our lives were still fluttering in the backwash of post-grad studies, finding 'real' jobs and generally settling down. It is naturally patchy, but charming nonetheless. Just like a typical British summer lawn. "Ritual & Circumstance" was knocked up as a one day batch/edition project. It is intended as no more than a 'calling card'. "Imperative Future (IF)" was produced for the UWE/CFPR contribution to the 2003 conference of the Southern Graphics Council (USA), 'Making Histories: Revolution and Representation', held in Boston, Mass. 2nd - 5th April. Exhibition in the Artists' books display area at the Library Faculty of Art, Media and Design, UWE Bristol: 9th April - 18th May Tracey Bush The Museum of Pelican Stairs Fathom Five Books Tracey Bush has created a series of artist's books, drawings, and prints based on charts of the River Thames and it's estuary. Embossed, concertina page river charts unfold the history of London's rivers. Included in the exhibition are books made from 1994 to the present. The Lost Rivers of London and London's Lost Rivers in two versions of an artist's book, which investigated the buried streams of London, the second version contains text collected from maps in the British Library and Guildhall Library. Printed upon the ICE, on the River Thames, includes notable dates when the Thames froze over, researched at the Meteorological Library, Bracknell. Recent projects have investigated the river environment and public access to it: The Thames pH Book is a multiple of tiny litmus paper books, which are dipped, page-by-page in river water. The water was collected from sites along the Thames with the help of the Environment Agency. The river journey is encapsulated by a list of locations, combined with the physical traces of river water. Included in the exhibition is the field-testing apparatus for the pH project. (18 bottles of Thames water from testing sites, pipettes) River Stairs the most recent artist's book, was launched at the 2002 London Artists' Book Fair. This project is a photographic exploration of river stairs in Docklands and the City. The pages are printed from Flexo plates at the UWE, Bristol. The densely inked images on soft Korean paper evoke the unease of these liminal places. The Museum of Pelican Stairs exhibited at the Library, UWE, is a collection of artefacts collected on the Thames foreshore. These objects are part of a new book in progress, which will include drawings of the objects and text. Tracey Bush gives regular demonstrations of Making Artists' Books at the British Library, London. The next book in the series, 'Subterraneans', will be launched at the Bookartbookshop, Hoxton, London, on the 28th November 2003.      
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