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Book Arts |
Pre-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 will have 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.
130+ 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. Publication date: January 2024. c.250pp, 21 x 29.7 cm, black and white throughout.
If you would like to support the publication of the ABYB by pre-ordering a copy at a special rate including P&P, please visit our online store for:
UK postage here.
International postage here. Thank you
Image – Detail of the AI cover design for the ABYB 2024-2025 requested by Tom Sowden.
Each issue of The Blue Notebook is available as a free pdf download from our website.
Articles in Volume 18 No.1 Autumn – Winter 2023:
BOOKARTBOOKSHOP presents: ‘Films about books, books about worlds’. A conversation with Nefeli Synesiou-Quay and Sonje Sylvarnes by Chiara Ambrosio.
‘Dis/continuity in Reading and Walking: Hamish Fulton’s Ontology of the Environment’ by Levi Sherman.
‘SALT+SHAW ON LOCATION’ – Paul Salt & Susan Shaw celebrate 21 years of making artists’ books.
‘Powers of the book-form: artists’ books & readers’ by Chloé Aubry.
‘Poetic Book Forms in Anne Carson’s Nox’ by Blair Solon.
Featured cover and interior pages artist – Cheung Tsz-ki Moonfold series, 2023. Mezzotint on Gampi. ‘Waxing crescent and gibbous, full moon and new moon, a lot of terms used to describe the different phase of the moon, terms made by people who is concerned about it, who is trying to be accurate mentioning the finest difference of the moon between yesterday and today. I am out of words to describe that moon, which is staying out there way before the dawn has come.’
Download your free copy here.
Image: Detail from the cover design for Vol 18 No 1 by Cheung Tsz-ki.
WBN United Artists invite you to read and respond to a text or book about birds, then make a postcard to send for an exhibition and mail art swap.
You can make a text or image (or both) contribution, postcards should be no larger than 16 x 11 cm.
Please email details of the text you are inspired by to compile a collaborative bibliography between all participants. For example: ‘“Hope” is the thing with feathers’, from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by R. W. Franklin, Harvard University Press, 1999.
Please also supply your postal address and IG / Twitter info if you wish. All artworks will be featured in an online gallery and shared publicly.
All postcards will be swapped so you will receive another artist’s card in return plus an extra gift from WBN2024 of a commissioned postcard by artist Stephen Fowler. Works will be shown in exhibitions in Bristol and Hong Kong.
Deadline 1st March 2024 but you can hand in as early as you want to.
Download the full brief here.
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 Four-Eyed Jay by Roelof Bakker.
Bower Ashton Library is inviting proposals from UWE, Bristol City Campus students and staff for the 2024 Artist in Residence.
The research and final piece should be inspired by any aspect of the library at Bower Ashton. The final work can take any form such as an item of printed matter, an object or artefact or installation that can be displayed in one of the library vitrines or in our Library Gallery. UWE Bristol Library provides a £200 bursary in the form of credit at the Bower Ashton Art Shop for materials.
Deadline: Monday 22nd January 2024. More info and how to apply can be found here.
Please make a note to save the date for our next Bristol Artist’s Book Event at Bower Ashton which will take place over the weekend of 29th and 30th June 2024.
The first Bristol Artist’s Book Event (BABE) was organised by Sarah Bodman and Tom Sowden in collaboration with Peter Begen and Snoozie Claiden at Arnolfini in 2007. It has since grown into an international event showcasing artists’ books to the public over a weekend every two years. In 2022 BABE moved to our Bower Ashton campus to create space for a larger event with talks, displays, performances and workshops alongside 100 exhibitor stands. Since its first outing, BABE has established a great reputation as a relaxed and friendly event to meet and talk to book artists about their work and buy works of art.
We have 100+ exhibitors coming from all over the UK and Ireland, Belgium, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden and the USA and books arriving from Australia, Poland and the USA.
A full programme of talks and workshops. Free event.
More information on previous editions of BABE can be found here. We hope you can come along!
Image: Detail of an artist’s book by Pauline Lamont-Fisher, photo taken by Rachel Marsh for the Pinhole Portrait series at BABE 2022.
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.
Selections from the related Shadow and Light project are currently on show at the Hatcher Library, University of Michigan, USA until 16th December 2023, in the first of a two part exhibition. A companion online exhibition, Tracing Iraqi Artists: From Shadow to Light, curated by 2023 Michigan Library Scholars Zainab Hakim and Serena Safawi, explores modern Iraqi struggle and resistance through contemporary visual art and connections to Iraqi artists and educators. A selection of works from Shadow and Light is also on display at UC Santa Barbara Library, California, USA. View them online here.
The image shown here is a detail from Al Mutanabbi Street by Mary McCarthy and Shirley Veenema, Boston, USA. You can read more about the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here project on the LAAF Festival website.
