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Book Arts |
The Centre for Print Research is hosting IMPACT 12 Printmaking Conference online and in person here in Bristol, UK, from 21st – 25th September 2022.
Éilis Kirby lives and works in Bristol where she operates as EAK Enterprises, incorporating EAK Press and other departments. Using found objects, images and texts, she makes artists’ books, collages, sculpture and installation that explore formal concerns, humour, pathos, absurdity, our relationship to the world around us, and that challenge mainstream values and hierarchies. She has a keenness for the discarded and overlooked, thinking through doing, and is an avid proponent of making-do, experimenting and improvising. For her, art is part of an ongoing, life-long research project into what it is to live in the world that we find ourselves in.
Éilis will be in artist-in-residence at Bower Ashton Library from June to September, with an exhibition of her artworks at the library from 1st July – 31st August. As part of the IMPACT 12 residency, Éilis will produce a giveaway for conference attendees / library visitors and will display the artworks made during her residency this September in one of the library vitrines.
Image: A detail from This World of Ours by Éilis Kirby
Read With Me by Sarah Bodman is the final part of the experimental book project ‘Read to Me’ (2018-2022). This artist’s book is the result of: a performative drawing event, readings by a psychometric reader, collages made during lockdown and words assembled from the dissected readings by Sarah.
It was made in tribute to Susan Hiller’s Sisters of Menon (Coracle Press for Gimpel Fils, 1983), and references the size and cover of the original book. Produced via a remote residency at the London Centre for Book Arts, UK, 2022. Edition of 60, 48 pages, 250 x 180 mm, interior four-colour risograph printed by Esther McManus on Redeem 130gsm recycled paper, relief printed (photopolymer plate) silver ink endpapers and cover, letterpress printed title plate.
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 2022-2023 issue has essays and articles by: Imi Maufe; David Solo; S. Pringly Binder; Maria White; Jeff Thomas, Jennie Hinchcliff & Chad Johnson; Moritz Küng & John McDowall; Robert Bolick; Tanya Peixoto; Susan Hartigan; Stephen Clarke; Amir Brito Cadôr; Dino Alfier; Rob van Leijsen; Zine Without a Crown.
It also contains 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.
There are also listings of 420+ new artists’ books that have been made recently, or will be made in 2022-2023, sent in by artists around the world.
Edited by Sarah Bodman. Published by Impact Press at The Centre for Print Research, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. ISBN 978-1-906501-22-8. 292pp, 21 x 29.7 cm, black and white throughout, 503 illustrations. Available now. Order your copy here.
The Centre for Print Research offers a series of dynamic continuing professional development courses (CPD) aimed at a wide audience including artists, designers, craftspeople, communicators, photographers, teachers and managers.
Our Book and Print Summer Institute includes classes on: Reflection – a critical stage in the learning process and key to understanding your own fine art practice, with Emma Gregory. How to make a ‘crit’ feel less like a firing squad, with Emma Gregory. Advanced Tetra Pak Printmaking with Stephen Fowler (fully booked). Blind Readings in Practice, with Emma Gregory. Poetic Artists’ Books with Jeremy Dixon (1 place left). Advanced Mokuhanga (water-based woodblock printmaking) with Lucy May Schofield (1 place left). Expanded Print with Emma Gregory – join a research group for four short days of facilitated open-ended collaborative experimentation in the screen print workshop. Guaranteed to push us all out of our comfort zones, the outcomes of this project will be published in some form at IMPACT 12 (the international print conference hosted by UWE in September).
More information and booking links here.
Image: Tarmac by Jeremy Dixon (Hazard Press).
In this issue:
In My ‘Heroic Frenzies’, Ulrike Stoltz reflects on the typography in an artist’s book, inspired by and dedicated to Giordano Bruno: Caro Giordano. Resonanzen & Gestrüpp/risonanze e fratte. The book was made in 2021 – awarded funding for the project by the Künstlerbuchpreis/Artist’s book prize Wolfenbüttel 2020.
In ‘People and books. Am I reimagining something?’ Anna Juchnowicz presents two different but related recent book projects. Both books explore intimist literature as inspiration. Intimist literature includes all types of personal writing, correspondence, diaries, notebooks, etc. and is the subject matter of the artist’s recent research.
Celebrating the 250th Anniversary of Steingruber’s Architectural Alphabet, Robert Bolick asks: What is it about artist books and architecture that they intersect so often? Architectural interiors and exteriors, ideas, themes, styles, landmark dwellings and edifices have found their metaphorical expression and embodiment in book art with such regularity that they make up a genre within the genre.
On the eve of a retrospective exhibition (April – June 2022) at The Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol, UK, founder Craig Atkinson writes about the history of Café Royal Books. Café Royal Books – est. 2005 – publish utilitarian, affordable and accessible zines, highlighting and preserving post war documentary photography that has links to Britain and Ireland.
Artist contributors: Catherine Beaugrand – intro page, Eva Hejdström – end page. Cover design (pictured here): Lizzie Smith
Subscribe to Vol 16 for £10 including worldwide postage here.
Postcards for Perec is now installed at Special Collections and Archives, Cardiff University, Wales, until September 2022.
Georges Perec’s postcards were first published in a French magazine Le FOU parle, in 1978. Far from their description ‘en Couleurs Véritables’ (in Real Colour), they are only postcard messages, with no holiday pictures at all, and entirely in black & white. The messages were translated into English by John Sturrock, and published in 1997 by Penguin Classics, in Species of Spaces and Other Pieces.
The unnumbered messages describe hedonistic vacations of happy holidaymakers, careless about sunburn and with never a hint of the discomforts of travel, nor the bills. There are so many messages that even if you took three holidays a year it would take a lifetime to experience them all.
The project, organised by Linda Parr has responded to Georges Perec’s 243 imaginary postcard messages by making the missing images, then sending real postcards. There was an enthusiastic worldwide response, catching the imagination of students & professors, artists & writers, Perec scholars, translators, mathematicians and architects.
Image: Detail of Jersey, by Emma Gregory, UK.
UWE bookarts has awarded the 2022 Agassi Book Arts Prize to the graduating MA Multidisciplinary Printmaking student Rae Holden.
The Late Night Press was founded in 2022 by Rae Holden and is currently located in Bristol. The aims of Late Night Press are to bring the craftsmanship of fine press to a larger audience by making the books and prints transient and affordable. You can read a little more about the prize here. Rae can be found on Twitter and Instagram.
Image: Detail of The Late Night Press publications, photo: Rae Holden.
We’re releasing a series of short videos for the IMPACT 12 #summerofprintandbooks hosted by CFPR, from June – September 2022. Some will explore IMPACT related themes through artworks, some will set a challenge or participatory call for you to join in and share your work online.
For our first challenge; Print Mistakes make Fluxus Works, UK artist Catherine Cartwright shows how to incorporate old prints and misprints with found papers to create mini collage-print booklets. In an explanatory video Killian Dunne shows us an artist’s book project – Concurrently Simultaneously – created in a long-distance collaboration between his wife Coral in Ecuador and himself in the UK separated during the Covid lockdowns.
We are releasing new videos on the first day of each month, look out for a challenge by Theresa Easton in July plus videos by Jules Sprake and Laura Rosser, and a participatory invitation from David Dellafiora in August. Watch all of the #summerofprintandbooks series of online talks and challenges in the run up to the IMPACT 12 conference in September on our YouTube playlist.
Image: A detail from the video Densities of Blank: a swatch of visual poetry by Jules Sprake.
UWE bookarts has been running a project for artists, librarians, curators and archivists in the Nordic/Scandinavian regions, supported by an award from the Nordic Culture Point. The project is a collaboration with Sarah Bodman (CFPR, UWE Bristol) Angie Butler, (CFPR, UWE Bristol) Imi Maufe (Codex Polaris, Norway), Lina Nordenström (Grafikverkstan Godsmagasinet, Sweden) Joakim Norling (Timglaset Editions, Malmö Sweden), Morwenna Peters (Bower Ashton Library, UWE Bristol), Tom Sowden (School of Art & Design, UWE, Bristol) and Maria White (Independent curator, UK).
Participatory activities have included online seminars for library staff and artists, a focus on Nordic/Scandi artists’ publishing at BABE 2022 with exhibitors from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Poland and Sweden, a one-day event hosted by Arlis South-West, and an exhibition project which will be shown during IMPACT conference in September 2022. You can read a little more info about it here.
Image: Detail from the Finnish artists’ books exhibitors at BABE, photo: Niamh Fahy.
#pinholebookportraits
Sunday 24th April was Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, which fell during BABE: Bristol Artist’s Book Event at Bower Ashton. Rachel Marsh of Semple Press devised a project for anyone to make and share a portrait of their favourite artist’s book. Rachel ran sessions during BABE for exhibitors to have portraits made of their artists’ books. These resulted in some beautiful images of books by Cathey Webb, Paul Cooke, Csilla Bíro, Angela Thames, Andrew Morrison, Elizabeth Willow, Kate Bernstein, Corinne Welch, and more.
This image is of the suitably titled A night visit to the library by Amir Brito Cadôr: Can we recognise a book by its silhouette? In line with Night Visit To The National Gallery, a book by Endre Tót, this book shows only the silhouette of some of my favourite artists’ books. The work proposes different readings based upon the selection of titles, on the relationship between the shapes and their corresponding captions. Extended edition of the first published by the artist in 2011. 52 pages. Language: French / English / Portuguese. published in an edition of 300 by Lendroit éditions, France.
You can download a sheet with information on how to make a pinhole camera here. Do share your own experiments online with #pinholebookportraits
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 online at UC Santa Barbara Library, California, USA. View them online here.
The image shown here is a detail from Fractured Terrain by Karen Kunc, USA, 2011. You can read more about the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here project on the LAAF Festival website.
