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Book Arts |
Order your copy of the Artist’s Book Yearbook 2024-2025. 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 2024-2025 issue has 10 essays, articles, and lots of useful information on: Artist’s Book Publishers & Presses; Bookshops for artists’ books; Artist’s Book Dealers; Artist’s Book Galleries & Centres; Collections, Libraries & Archives; Artist’s Book Fairs and Events; Book Arts Courses and Workshops; Design, Print & Bind; Print Studios; Journals and Magazines; New Reference Publications; Organisations, People, Projects and Societies.
150+ national and international artists have also listed up to 3 of their recent book works.
Edited by Sarah Bodman. Published by Impact Press at The Centre for Print Research, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. Published January 2024. 296pp, 21 x 29.7 cm, black and white throughout.
Order your copy via our online store – prices include:
UK postage here.
International postage here. Thank you
Image: Detail of the AI cover design for the ABYB 2024-2025 requested by Tom Sowden.
Tricia Treacy + Denise Bookwalter invited artists to contribute to their collaboratively curated project, unfolding library. “We prompted a handful of artists + designers to make a book object within the past six weeks about a passage of time. We are excited to “table” as a method to exhibit books that would not normally be viewed together. This first edition of the unfolding library will be launched at the Bergen Art Book Fair with books by Abra Ancliffe, Sarah Bodman, Anna Buckner, Anna Budniewski, Zach Clark, AB Gorham, Sofie Hodara + Zoleigh Borg, Wylie Kasai, McKenna Kellner, Benjamin Hicketier, Jimmy Luu, Maggie Minor, Matt Neff, Arzu Ozkal, Stephen Parks, Eva Parra + Camilo Otero, Nora Pauwels, Alice Schiavone, Jay Snodgrass, Aurelius Sutte, Jason Urban + Leslie Mutchler, Ben van Dyck, and ‹usus› Uta Schneider + Ulrike Stoltz. A special publication about the project will be sold at the fair.”
Bergen Art Book Fair, established in 2013, is an annual festival in Norway dedicated to artistic publishing. BABF serves as a platform for showcasing artists’ books and self-published works by both local and international creators, as well as independent art publishers. The fair is organised by Pamflett, an artist-run initiative dedicated to self-publishing and promoting artists’ books. For more information about the fair visit the BABF website.
Image: Detail from the artist’s book natural time by Sarah Bodman made for the unfolding library.
Tell The Trees (Listen to the Trees). WBN United Artists invited responses to The Overstory by Richard Powers for an exhibition and mail art swap at Bower Ashton Library, Bristol, UK. We received 200+ works by artists from countries around the world including: Australia, Austria, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, China, Cyprus, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, UK, USA.
Responses to the book developed our overarching theme – to look after our environment, listen to it and take care of it. Artists works have been created in praise of particular trees or forests and to campaigners and activists who work to protect them and engage others with caring for the environment. Many recalled their experiences of standing with trees and experiencing the peace of nature, being grateful for the restful space they provide.
The works are on display in the main gallery space at Bower Ashton Library from 3rd April – 30th July 2025. Come along and visit in person or find out more about WBN 2025, the link to the online gallery and a free download zine Imagined (field notes) by Gracia & Louise on the WBN 2025 exhibition page.
Find out more about our past World Book Nights in the video ‘What We Do in the Shadows: bringing book arts into World Book Night’ here.
Image: Detail from Imagined (field notes) by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison.
Written contributions to this issue include: Alastair Noble of Dunoon MOCA reflects upon the publishing practices of Ian Tyson (1933 – 2021): Pamphlets, poets and painters in the 1970s. Viola Hildebrand-Schat reviews – Ad Reinhardt. Peinture moderne et responsabilité esthétique by Leszek Brogowski, Les Éditions de la Transparence. In MANIZESTO TO GO, Paul Thompson introduces his concept of zook – a hybrid of a book and a zine: Content euchres craft. Meaning supersedes materials. These two short sentences, a total of only six words, describe a zook. In Multiple Discovery of Artists’ Books, Rosemarie Tonk looks at the development of artists’ books as artistic expression in regions beyond the movement’s current primary centres of practice of North America, parts of Europe, and Australia.In ONE BOOK AFTER ANOTHER: NOTES ON SELF-PUBLISHING, Fernanda Fedrizzi analyses the solutions adopted to make her poetic work viable as a book and elaborates on how the publishing artist’s location influences the conception and realisation of such work, drawing on her experience as a Brazilian publishing artist.
Our thanks to Mirosław Ryszard Makowski who introduced us to and allowed the use of a selection of pages from his father Zbigniew Makowski’s book 13th September 1960, this is music to suit all, as the featured artist for this issue. And to artist Ben Jenner who accepted our invitation to respond to the work of Zbigniew Makowski (1930-2019).
Download your free copy and browse all back issues here.
Image: Detail from 13th September 1960, this is music to suit all by Zbigniew Makowski (1930-2019).
Saturday 10th May 2025 is World Collage Day! Sarah Bodman and Roelof Bakker invite you to join them on Zoom for an informal talk about their recent collaborative collage project. The mail art exchange has been completed as of early 2025 and they are working towards a publication from the project with written contributions by Declan Wiffen and Dr Rachel Smith.
Inspired by a statement by the American writer and activist James Baldwin ‘This place will not exist until I make it’, we responded to it as: a place of us to occupy in our minds together; a place for us to make art together; a space for us to think about the environment through our art making. We also took prompts from Paul Thek’s teaching notes. We’ll show some images from our postal exchange of which there are 22 x A5 collages and 22 collaged postcards of instructions and questions. Why not join us, and as it is World Collage Day, if you wish, you can collage-along while we talk, then show what you have made all together at the end, or just listen in. The session will run from 12.30 – 1.30 BST, email Sarah for the link to join: Sarah.Bodman@uwe.ac.uk
Image: Detail of some postcards from our project Sarah Bodman & Roelof Bakker.
This touring exhibition is 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. The gallery pages show images and information for each of the 260 books completed for the project.
Exhibitions held 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; Rosenberg Library at the City College of San Francisco, USA; Konstlitografiska museet, Helliden, Sweden; Hatcher Library, University of Michigan, USA; UC Santa Barbara Library, California, USA.
Image: Detail from the artist’s book Lost Books series: Book 2, Book 3, & Book 4 by Robbin Ami Silverberg. You can find out more about the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here project on the LAAF Festival website.
