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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.
We have two free, online public talks in June: on Weds 4th June from 12.45 – 1.15 BST visiting artist Gareth Phillips will present a CFPR lunchtime talk on Teams about his recent project Caligo. Invoking environmental consequence, mortality, colonialism and religion, this photobook sculpture depicts a fictional story of a group of humans escaping climate catastrophe… The talk will be held on Teams, joining info here.
Weds 11th June from 11.00 – 11.30 BST we have a Zoom talk by artist Otto of Ottographic from his studio in France. Otto will talk about producing his screenprinted books and his move from the UK to establish Atelier Salamandre in Gourec. Email Sarah for joining info: Sarah.Bodman@uwe.ac.uk
Image: Gareth Phillips – Side view of Caligo Photobook Sculpture, Edition III, 400 x 300 cm, Aesthetica Art Award, York, UK.
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 until 30th July 2025. Come along and visit in person, it’s open to the public Mon – Fri from 9am – 5pm, 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 of WBN collage and drawing on withdrawn library book inside cover by Jac Batey.
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).
ABC (Artists’ Book Club) presents Bestiary: A collaborative discovery – a contemporary
reimagining of the medieval bestiary through the lens of artists, printmakers and bookmakers. Rooted in a shared fascination with the power of imagined creatures and the narratives we build around them, the project invited artists to take on the role of explorer, encountering and documenting a newly discovered beast. Each artist was given a simple brief: create a single folio page introducing your beast to the world. Some responded with scientific-style field notes or expedition sketches; others playfully leaned into fable, fantasy, or absurdity. The collection are diverse and sometimes unsettling, hybrids of form and meaning, rendered through print, drawing, collage, and text.
Joining the ABC exhibition is a display from ‘A NYC Bestiary’ – a project from Bestiary, an interdisciplinary course taught by Jason Urban at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. The class included students from various majors ranging from graphic design and illustration to fashion and film with an interest in using the medieval bestiary as a way of understanding humanity’s changing relationship to the animal world. For A NYC Bestiary, the class collected occasions of human/animal interaction within the five boroughs and brought them to the printed page in a medieval aesthetic. The project emphasises some of the unique animal characters of New York framed through an historic lens. On display from 3rd July – 2nd September 2025 here at Bower Ashton Library, open Monday – Friday 9am – 5pm.
Image: Detail of a Contemporary Chimera by Kate Bernstein, ChatGPT, collage, print.
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 Ash rises silence falls by Egidija Čiricaitė. You can find out more about the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here project on the LAAF Festival website.
