 |
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 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.
National and international artists also list their recent or upcoming 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.
Deadline for entries (extended due to leave) is 23rd October 2023. All listings are free of charge. Download the listings form here.
If you would like to support the publication of the ABYB by pre-ordering a copy at a discounted price please visit our online store here, scroll down and select UK or international postage options for the 2024-2025 issue. Thank you.
Image – detail: LDK 2,020 by Yasushi Cho, NIKKOO / Laughter (Japan), artist’s page in the ABYB 2022-2023.’Flyers advertising the sale of flats are dropped into my postbox every day. I always cut them up and make into a collage book that would be the form of book and cube.’
Congratulations to the MA Multidisciplinary Printmaking student Cheung Tsz-ki who has been awarded the 2023 Agassi Book Arts Prize for Midday, 2023 a set of 11 mezzotints and 10 letterpress printed poems.
‘When is it midday? Is it when the sun shines right above your head, or the moment when the hour hand touches the minute hand, or the moment between sundown and moonrise? The portfolio was named Midday, sharing its quality of pointing towards somewhere uncertain, suggesting a vague narration that weaves between those images and texts. I like where the idea of midday is, rather than an absolute middle of something, it is situated somewhere that you could only know is neither the beginning or the end.’
More info about Tsz-ki’s work can be found here and on Instagram.
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.
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.
Sarah was invited to make a piece of new work for the FREEDOM Project touring exhibition currently on show at Book Art Museum in Łódź, Poland. The project is curated by Ania Gilmore & Małgorzata Oakes. The exhibition at the Book Art Museum, Łódź, 01/10/23 – 31/10/23 is organised by Jadwiga Tryzno.
In tandem with the 30-year Anniversary of the Book Art Museum in Łódź, the FREEDOM Project is a response to the series of crises and ongoing global conflicts humanity is facing today. Students, educators and professional artists were invited to speak up on issues related to human rights, violence, war, aggression, social and racial injustice.
Book Art Museum / Fundacja Correspondance Des Arts, ul. Tymienieckiego 22/L, 90-349 Łódź, Poland.
Laura Rosser is an artist working with printed matter, error, ideas of the post-digital and machine agencies.
Laura will run a performative COPY, COPY SHOP drop in exhibition here at Bower Ashton, during the week of 27th November 2023 in the publishing space. This event is open to all students, staff and alumni. You can watch a video for CFPR’s summer of print and books festival 2022 where Laura Rosser discusses her work on The Agency of Error in Post-digital Print here.
Rooms 0C1 publishing space at Bower Ashton Campus, UWE Bristol, Kennel Lodge Road, Bristol, BS3 2JT.
Image: Detail from The Agency of Error in Post-Digital Print, exhibition, Plymouth University. Photo: Dom Moore.
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 the 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.
More information on previous editions of BABE can be found here. We hope you can come along!
Image: Detail of Jeremy Dixon’s Hazard Press stand at BABE 2022, photo by Niamh Fahy.
Artist’s Book Club is open to any of UWE students, alumni and staff.
ABC 2023-2024 will be run by artist Ben Jenner for the next academic year. Ben is devising a series of treats which include: a themed exhibition, a trip, talks, workshops and an ABC table at BABE 2024.
Our final meeting for this academic year was a summer show and tell session of books made over this year and for the ‘Night and Day’ ABC exhibition which is on display at Bower Ashton Library until 5th September. Visiting artist Jeff Rathermel joined the group session and presented each participant with an Indulgence memento. You can find more information about ABC here.
Image: Cover of artist’s book for The Herbarium by Ben Jenner
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 No Words by Judith Serebrin, Redwood City, California, USA, August 2013. You can read more about the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here project on the LAAF Festival website.
