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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.
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 is the historic centre of Baghdad bookselling full of bookstores cafes, stationery shops, tea and tobacco shops. It has been the heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community.
Beau Beausoleil, poet and bookseller – founder of The Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition, has been working since that day in order to establish a dialogue in solidarity with al-Mutanabbi Street.
As Beau says; In the introduction to the project’s anthology ‘Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here’ – I wrote this; Sometimes the weight of our own silence becomes completely unbearable, until we cannot take one more day of reading about the blood, bone, and ash. And then the moment comes when we recognize that this distant landscape is our own, and that we must walk through it.
We mark this day in memory and solidarity with the people of Iraq and with cultural workers in zones of conflict everywhere. Each year readings and events are organised under the banner of ‘Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here’ over the month of March to reinforce the idea that culture cannot be destroyed. Readings take place in various and sundry locations including bookstores, cafes, classrooms, art spaces, living rooms, on trains and buses and outdoors.
You are welcome to come along to an hour in al-Mutanabbi Street, a pop-up exhibition of artists’ books and letterpress printed broadsides from the project, in room 0C2, Thursday 6th March 2025, from 12.30 – 1.30, at Bower Ashton campus, Kennel Lodge Road, Bristol BS3 2JT.
Image – Detail from the artist’s book ‘Al-Mutanabbi’ by Dikko Faust & Esther K Smith, Purgatory Pie Press, USA, 2013.
Tell The Trees (Listen to the Trees). WBN United Artists invite you to respond to The Overstory by Richard Powers by making a piece of work for an exhibition and mail art swap.
What would you say to the trees? What are they saying to you? Is there a tree nearby that you want to send a message to or one you admire from afar?
You can make a text or image (or both) contribution, it can be anything that can be posted*, no larger than A5 size. It might be a postcard written to your favourite tree or a message that a tree has told you or a drawing of it. It could also be a print, painting, a little book, pamphlet, piece of writing, etc. It’s up to you. Your artwork will be shown in an exhibition at Bower Ashton Library, UWE Bristol, UK from April – June 2025, featured in an online gallery on Instagram and shared publicly.
All artworks will be swapped so you won’t get yours back – instead you will receive another artist’s work plus a special WBN keepsake letterpress printed by Rachel Marsh | Semple Press for WBN 2025.
Deadline: Weds 5th March 2025. Download the brief with full instructions and more suggested reading / listening 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: Listen to the Trees collaged and printed artwork by Teresa Ogando.
Written contributions to this issue include: Navigating co-creation and collaboration through Artists’ Publishing by Richard Nash. David Paton writes about the experience of unfolding Felicia Rice’s Heavy Lifting (Moving Parts Press). Egidija Čiricaitė on: THE RELEVANCE OF RELEVANCE – A glance at artists’ books from pragmatics; and a few observations. Tamar MacLellan & Philippa Wood discuss Re-working Failure: Taking a different approach to making. John McDowall provides “an ekphrasis” of The Great Leap Backwards by Sarah Jacobs.
Special thanks to artist Paul Cooke (Dubious Books, USA), who allowed us to use a selection of pages from his brilliant book I Know My ABC, as the featured artist for this issue.
Download your free copy and browse all back issues here.
Image: Cover Design for this issue, ‘B’ from I Know My ABC by Paul Cooke.
Mark Fearbunce’s exhibition ‘Of Shrew Taming’ is on display in the main cases at Bower Ashton Library from Thursday 6th February – Tuesday 1st April 2025. An artwork in two parts: a 54-page collage restructuring every word of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew into alphabetical order, and a three and a half hour digital reading of the collage.
Join us for ‘In Conversation’ – Mark Fearbunce & Angie Butler, Thursday 13th March 11.00 – 11.45 in the Special Collections area of Bower Ashton Library. No booking needed, just turn up, free event, all welcome.
More about the exhibition, ‘In Conversation’ and visitor information can be found here.
Image: Detail from the project Of Shrew Taming by Mark Fearbunce.
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.
The image shown here is a detail from the artist’s book The Song Lives On by John Bently | Liver & Lights Scriptorium. You can find out more about the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here project on the LAAF Festival website.
