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Book Arts |
Congratulations to the MA Multidisciplinary Printmaking student Eloise Lifton, who has been awarded this year’s Agassi Book Arts Prize for her work in conversation, a screenprinted artist’s book, 2025.
“My practice utilises screenprint to consider stillness in the domestic through the exploration of personal narratives. I attempt to navigate the liminality between comfort and discomfort through reflection and observation; where snapshots become visceral faded memories, clutching tentatively onto moments we cannot grasp. Within quiet screenprints, layers of ink become symbolic of layers of recollection. Each layer speaking to that of the last whilst subtly altering our perception of the present.”
Image: Detail from in conversation by Eloise Lifton. More info about Eloise’s work can be found here.
Sarah has curated a selection of books and accompanying talk for the conference Quand la création s’empare de l’édition (When Creation Takes Over Publishing), at the LILLIAD Learning Center Innovation, University of Lille, France, 12th – 14th November 2025.
‘Tournez-vous et faites face à l’étrange: comment le physique et le numérique peuvent-ils se croiser dans les livres d’artistes?’ (Turn and face the strange: how might the physical and digital intersect in artists’ books?) shows some examples of artists’ publishing with digital and analogue technologies including: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under Seas, Ruth Sacks, Garamond Press, 2013; Kubla Can’t, Tony Kemplen, 1996, Twelve Tapestries, Elizabeth Lebon, Boabooks, 2014 and Nondescription of the World XVII, Radoslaw Nowakowski, 2006.
The conference will explore contemporary artists publishing (books, series, posters, records, digital productions, etc.) and their constant evolution through the rise of digital technologies. Physical books remain central, but do they now have to be compatible with digital rules and codes as the rise of digital and self-publishing platforms redesigns the creation, production and distribution process.
Image: Some of the book works included in the exhibition.
World Book Night 2026 – The Mountains Are Calling… WBN United Artists invite you to read and respond to a text or book about mountains.
WBN is organised by Sarah Bodman and Linda Parr with input from Nancy Campbell. We invite you to make a 2D or 3D work (which must fold flat to fit into an A5 envelope for mailing) inspired by mountains to send for an exhibition and mail art swap. You can also nominate a book or text about mountains to sahre in our collaborative bibliography. 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: Photo by Eberhard Grossgasteiger.
Written contributions to this issue include: In Making / Walking A Cappella Abigail Reynolds discusses her approach to and use of the book, from Georges Perec’s cataloguing systems to working in and with the landscapes of Cornwall. “As is proper to considerations of time, and the land, and artworks, the book sections do not stop with existing books, but project into the future”.
Corina Reynolds Executive Director of Center for Book Arts, New York, reflects on Vico’s Spiral: Half Century of Artists’ Books, a recent exhibition curated by Robbin Ami Silverberg and Carole Naggar that celebrated the 50th anniversary of CBA through its exhibitions’ history.
Phantom Library is an experimental inquiry into the ontology of the book and the logic of classification within library systems. Cheng (Christine) Dong revisits the identity of books and their relation to the spaces that shelter them.
In I Kill You in Dreams by Beldan Sezen and the Artist’s Book as Relational Entity, Eliza Strong reviews Beldan Sezen’s artist’s book I Kill You in Dreams (2024), highlighting its function in exposing and disrupting narratives that assert the necessity of war.
Inspired by the discovery of The Polar Tombola: A Book of Banished Words by Nancy Campbell as a model for collaborative book-making, Ruth Hallinan Assistant Manager of The National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) shows some examples of works created by visitors during their open days.
Cover and artist’s pages by Yunqi Peng a graphic designer, researcher and intercultural book-making practitioner exploring alternative bookstores and art book fairs.
Download your free copy and browse all back issues here.
Image: Detail from a bookwork by Yunqi Peng @cheapball_yunqi.
How to read a book is an exhibition concerned with language, writing, and memory. It also explores themes of neurodiversity, including dyslexia, by offering visitors an alternative way of approaching books and text.
Applying methods found in palmistry to lines found on the covers of well-read paperback books, this exhibition is an invitation to make art out of the everyday.
Alongside How to read a book are other works exploring what it is to be a book, on show here at Bower Ashton Library 04/09/25 – 04/11/25.
Stephen Emmerson is a writer and artist. His most recent publications are: flight, published by Guillemot Press, Big Song, published by Broken Sleep Books, and Gallery and A Box of Ideas, both published by Timglaset Editions.
Join us on Tues 4th November 12.45 – 1.15 for a free talk with artist Stephen Emmerson as part of his exhibition How to read a book. Special Collections area of Bower Ashton Library, UWE Bristol. No booking needed, just turn up, free event, all welcome.
Image: from How to read a book by Stephen Emmerson.
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 It’s Spring by Loretta Cappanera. You can find out more about the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here project on the LAAF Festival website.
