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We set up the artists’ books partnership exhibition programme (ABPP) in 2005, which has loaned works to universities, collections, schools, libraries and bookshops in North America, UK, The Netherlands and Finland to date.
The programme loans artists’ books from Sarah’s own collection at CFPR, on a no fee basis - to set up exhibitions and events promoting the artist’s book to a wider community.
Previous loans include: 80 books from the collection to The Art of the Book: Collaboration at the University of Missouri, USA. The second exhibition in The Art of the Book series, curated by Marian Amies, Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Missouri. Proceeds from the catalogue created funds for The Art of the Book Scholarship to be awarded to BFA students, for international travel for art studies and the production of artists’ books. We are currently collaborating again with Marian Amies for The Art of the Book: Journals Then and Now, which launches its exhibition tour in Spring 2010.
Some workshop loans include: The Richard Attenborough Centre at the University of Leicester; Stroud College Foundation Degree; Isle of Wight Book Arts Group and the Society of Bookbinders.
Exhibition loans include: Limfjordscenter Doverodde, Denmark: Cowles Library, Drake University Des Moines, USA: AKI (ArtEz) The Netherlands: Stroud College; Quay Arts Centre, Isle of Wight; The Greenhouse, Guernsey; University of Leicester; londonprintstudio, London; The New Art Gallery Walsall; Swindon College; Stroud College; Bristol Reference Library, Yateley Library; University of Chester; Internationales Bentlager Druckgraphik - Symposium, Germany and Galleri VOX, Bergen, Norway.
We loaned a selection of artists’ books from the Meir Agassi Archive to the artist’s group Public Space With A Roof for their project Endless Installation: A Ghost Story For Adults (Encounters, Questions, Collaboration) at SMART Project Space, Amsterdam, March 7 - April 25, 2009.
If you would like to borrow some books for a project or exhibition, please download the archive list and contact Sarah Bodman.
Bookmarks Projects
Book Marks: Infiltrating the Library System, is an ongoing, annual series of free international distribution of bookmarks made by book artists, to help promote their work and to get the public involved with artists’ books.
Since May 2004, the Bookmarks series has visited 83 venues in Italy, The Netherlands, UK, Germany, Poland, Spain, Canada, Japan, Poland, Brazil, Croatia, South Korea, New Zealand, Cyprus, Australia, and the USA.
350 artists have contributed 35,000 bookmarks to the annual projects to date.
The Bookmarks project series also aims to encourage appreciation of work in the format of the artist's book. Participating book artists each hand-produce an edition of 100 signed and numbered bookmarks to give away.
Contributions are collated into sets, with one full set sent to each of the contributing artists and an archive set kept here for exhibitions. The rest are divided up into distribution boxes, which are sent to participating galleries, bookstores and libraries around the world, for people to help themselves from. Each venue also receives an archive set of bookmarks to share or keep.
Each bookmark is stamped with the Bookmarks project website, which directs the taker of the bookmark to this gallery section of the website.
If you would like to join in future Bookmarks projects, please email Sarah for instructions at Sarah.Bodman@uwe.ac.uk and see below:
Bookmarks VII Infiltrating the Library System 2009-2010 is now online.
Bookmarks VIII Escaping the Library System 2010-2011 - has a twist - this time, it will be Librarians only. Library staff will be making them rather than distributing them.
Quite a few of our previous bookmarks makers have been librarians, so we thought we would ask them to infiltrate some other places with their own bookmarks. If you work in a library and would like to join, then please get in touch.
For archived pages of each project please visit the Bookmarks homepage.
| Centre for Fine Print Research collaborations with Arnolfini |  |
Our next collaboration was The Cover of a Book is the Beginning of a Journey (22nd Nov 2008 - 18th Jan 2009) an exhibition of performative artists’ books at Arnolfini.
Our collaboration for 2009 was the second BABE Event, which took over the galleries and auditorium space at Arnolfini to expand the event BABE showcased artists’ books from 83 national and international artists, presses, groups, colleges, publishers and dealers over the weekend of 4-5 April 2009. 6,467 visitors came to Arnolfini for the event over the weekend, and exhibitors travelled from as far afield as South Korea, mainland Europe and the USA to take part in BABE.
We love books, and these are a few others who do too: Guy Begbie, Shevone Bliss and Liam and Carly Kok. 46 other artists joined them for this project.
To celebrate the National Year of Reading 2008 and World Book Day, we invited contributions to Reading around… asking artists to make an artwork page / movie clip / audio clip about reading.
The project is archived in three parts:
• An online website archive, launching at the end of April, of artworks about reading.
• A free download, self-assembly PDF book of images from the artwork “page” files.
• 50 library/bookstore packs of copied “pages”, to slip into random library books.
We hope this will encourage more people to find out about books by artists through the website link we have added to the back of each page in the library book packs: www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/reading.htm
Click here to view the online gallery.
| What’s in the Box?
A project for the Centre for Fine Print Research, published as a collection of artists’ books curated and edited by Tom Sowden. Supported and sponsored by: CFPR, UWE Bristol School of Art, Media and Design and Hewlett Packard . Each project involves MA Printmaking students, staff and invited artists; and has so far produced five boxed volumes of books by 50 artists. Each book is digitally printed from a single, A3 folded sheet, printed and bound in uniform covers, with contents supplied by the artists. Books can be ordered individually or in boxed sets, see our publications pages for more information. |
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Artist’s Book Study Area: Collection and Exhibition Programme
The Bower Ashton library collection of artists’ books is a working study collection for student and public access.
An artist’s book exhibition programme is curated by Sarah Bodman and documented through our archived website and a regular book arts newsletter, mailed to an extensive list of over 2000 national and international academics and artists (you can also download the newsletter in colour). The exhibitions programme has seen 78 national and international artists' books exhibitions since the launch of the area in May 2002. The exhibitions range from individuals: Ian Tyson, Tony Kemplen, Liz Workman, John Bently, John Dilnot, Carrie Galbraith, Karen Hanmer and Les Coleman to touring shows such as Black/White [and Read] curated by Gloria Helfgott; Little Treasures: an exhibition of collaborative works by Stephen Spurrier and other artists from Australia; the Wexford Artist’s Book Exhibition curated by Andi McGarry and Denis Collins; FACTION, and works from UIAH Helsinki, and the Scuola Graphica, Venice.
For full details of all these exhibitions with archived images, please see the Archived Exhibitions pages.
| Artists’ Books Marketing and Creative Production Survey |
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The first guide was compiled after a one-year, AHRC supported survey in 2005, for the book artist in their role of creative maker, publisher and distributor of their own artwork. A second, expanded and updated edition was published in August 2007 as a free download PDF e-book.
We are working on a new updated edition to be published in 2010.
| Regenerator
- Altered Books Project Veronica Morgan and Robert Heather both emailed in April 2006 to give a link to an online article from the New York Times about an altered books project exhibition involving Portland library and the Maine College of Art in Portland, USA; Long Overdue: Book Renewal, where nearly 200 artists recycled books that were withdrawn from use, into artists' books. This inspired us to do something similar with the books that had been boxed up for withdrawal from our School's art library at Bower Ashton. The project ran as an exchange, with 72 artists selecting a book to work on and return. The books were exhibited, and swapped. The project archive can be viewed on our exhibitions pages at: /www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/regen1.htm |
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Arcadia id est: artists’ books, nature and the landscape
The Arcadia exhibition, symposium and accompanying small publication examined how nature and landscape are interpreted and utilised in a narrative format: through the use of image, text, structural and site–specific works in relation to the artist’s book. The books in the exhibition ranged from traditional landscape works to social, ecological and political works.
The exhibition launched at TRACE Gallery Dorset, in March 2005 and toured over the following 34 months to: UWE, Bristol; Centre for the Artist's Book, Australia; Moufflon Bookshop, Nicosia, Cyprus; Eagle Gallery, London; Hartley Library, University of Southampton; AKI, Enschede, The Netherlands, Rikhardinkatu Library, Helsinki, Finland The Yard Gallery at Wollaton Hall; the John M Flaxman Library at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Ginkgo Reading Room at the John M. Olin Library, Washington University, USA; The Fleet Library at Rhode Island School of Design, USA; Noosa Regional Gallery, Tewantin, Australia and The National Print Museum of Ireland.
The Arcadia project included special events at many venues. For the online gallery and archive, please click here
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