Sunday 14 December 2014

Artist's Book: Be Nice When It's Finished - Berlin




I'm please to announce Be Nice When It's Finished - Berlin has just been purchased by the National Art Library in the V & A Museum, London. The book joins their prestigious bookarts collection.
 

Be Nice When It's Finished - Berlin
Leporello constructed from a single A3 sheet folded to make 16 pages.
80mm X 100mm with separate grey card folding cover with silver lining and silver 'pipe' on front.
Red and white ribbon is bound into the book to resemble builder's hazard tape, and keep the book closed. Brighton 2014. Edition of 20 - all numbered and signed plus embossed with Damp Flat Books name.

Micro Artist's Book celebrating the major building works that have become a regular feature of Berlin. After visiting Berlin in 2006 I was amazed at the scale of building works and in a return visit in 2013 it was still just as frenzied. A walk round the city made me feel as if I was in a real-life 'Sim City' that was constantly being knocked down and rebuilt around me, I took lots of photos of the pink pipes, cranes, hazard tape and false facades. Berlin is a dynamic place to be and there's a strange feeling that if you turn your back the building behind you might not be there when you turn around again. It's 25 years since the Wall has come down but the city itself has still not worked out what it's wants to be and the transformations are constant. The title of the book is from a quip my uncle Harry used to make when we came across building works in London (or any city) - "London, be nice when it's finished". I love the idea that one day Berlin will be finished, - maybe I'll visit in another seven years and have a look.









Monday 1 December 2014

Future Fantasteek! on show in Russia 1st August - 30th September

The RUKSSIAN Artists’ Books exhibition is about to move to a new location.
The Pavel Kuznetsov Museum, Saratov, Russia.
1st August - 30th September 2014

I am showing Future Fantasteek! Nos. 12, 14 and 15


Curators: Sarah Bodman, Mikhail Pogarsky, Vasily Vlasov, Viktor Lukin. Artists’ books speak the international language of art. These books can be understood in almost any corner of the world. Artists, who work in the genre of the artist’s book professionally form a large international community. However, the artist’s book like any other artform has its own regional and national peculiarities.

Apart from the language in which the text is presented, there are various historical roots from which the artist’s book has emerged and on which the contemporary tree of this artform grows. In every country and in every city young artists learn many things from prominent artists and as such, new formal and informal schools of thought around the artist’s book are formed.

The international project "RUKSSIAN Artists' Books' aims to demonstrate the unique and common features of the artist's book, presenting works by artists from the UK and Russia united by national artistic traditions.

British artists: Alice Potter, Andy Parsons & Glenn Holman, Angie Butler, Anwyl Cooper-Willis, Barrie Tullett, Caseroom Press/Scottish Poetry Library, Charlotte Hall, Christopher Robinson, Craig Atkinson, Duncan Bullen & Jamie Crofts, Elizabeth Willow & David Armes, Guy Begbie, Hazel Grainger, Helen Douglas & Thomas Evans, Iain Biggs & Josh Biggs, Jackie Batey, Jeremy Dixon, Joan Ainley, John Bently, John McDowall, J P Willis, Julie Johnstone, Les Bicknell, Liz Jackson, Nancy Campbell, Otto, Pauline Lamont-Fisher, Philippa Wood & Tamar MacLellan, Sarah Bodman, seekers of lice, Simon Goode, Simon Le Ruez, Sophie Loss, Stephen Fowler, Susan Johanknecht, Theresa Easton, Tom Sowden.

Russian artists: Nikita Alekseev, Tatiana Antoshina, Vasily Vlasov, Sergei Vorobyov, Viktor Goppe, Emil Guzairov, Aleksander Dzhikiya, Mikhail Dronov, Igor Zadera, Mikhail Karasik, Valery Korchagin, Nikolai Krastchin, Viktor Lukin, Kira Matissen, Valery Orlov, Peter Perevezentsev, Mikhail Pogarsky, Sergei Romashko, Aleksander Savelyev, Dmitry Saenko, Aleksander Svirsky, Vera Khlebnikova, Evelina Schatz, Sergei Shutov, Gunel Yuran, Sergei Yakunin.

Pavel Kuznetsov Museum, Radischev str., 39, Saratov 410000, Russia

http://www.russianmuseums.info/M1381
---   ---   ---   ---   ---   ---

The information at the start of the Exhibition in 13th March 2014.

I am delighted to have been invited to exhibit three issues of Future Fantasteek! Nos. 12, 14 and 15 as part of the following international exhibition.

RUKSSIAN Artists Book
Artist’s Book in the UK and Russia
International Project

(Following text from Sarah Bodman - curator).

Organisers: 
State Historical, Architectural, Art and Landscape Museum-Reserve «Tsaritsyno», Moscow
International Association «Kniga Khudozhnika», Moscow
Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UWE Bristol, UK.

Curators: Sarah Bodman, Mikhail Pogarsky, Vasily Vlasov, Viktor Lukin, 

Place: Tsaritsyno State Historical, Architectural, Art and Landscape Museum-Reserve, Moscow

Date: 13th March – 18th May 2014

Concept: Artists’ books speak the international language of art. These books can be understood in almost any corner of the world. All artists, who work in the genre of the artist’s book professionally form a large international community. However, the artist’s book like any other artform has its own regional and national peculiarities. Apart from the language in which the text is presented, there are various historical roots from which the artist's book has emerged and on which the contemporary tree of this artform grows. In every country and in every city young artists learn many things from prominent artists and as such, new formal and informal schools of thought around the artist’s book are formed.

The international Project “R
UKSSIAN Artists’ Books” aims to demonstrate the unique and common features of the artist's book, presenting works by artists from the UK and Russia united by national artistic traditions.


British artists: Angie Butler, Anwyl Cooper-Willis, Barrie Tullett, Charlotte Hall, Christopher Robinson, Craig Atkinson, Elizabeth Willow & David Armes, Guy Begbie, Hazel Grainger, Helen Douglas & Thomas Evans, Jackie Batey, Jeremy Dixon, John Bently, John McDowall, Julie Johnstone, Les Bicknell, Nancy Campbell, Otto, Pauline Lamont-Fisher, Philippa Wood & Tamar MacLellan, Sarah Bodman, seekers of lice, Simon Goode, Simon Le Ruez, Sophie Loss, Stephen Fowler, Susan Johanknecht, Theresa Easton, Tom Sowden.

Russian artists: Nikita Alekseev, Tatiana Antoshina, Vasily Vlasov, Sergei Vorobyov, Viktor Goppe, Emil Guzairov, Aleksander Dzhikiya, Mikhail Dronov, Igor Zadera, Mikhail Karasik, Valery Korchagin, Nikolai Krastchin, Viktor Lukin, Kira Matissen, Valery Orlov, Peter Perevezentsev, Mikhail Pogarsky, Sergei Romashko, Aleksander Savelyev, Dmitry Saenko, Aleksander Svirsky, Vera Khlebnikova, Evelina Schatz, Sergei Shutov, Gunel Yuran, Sergei Yakunin.



Tuesday 21 October 2014

Practice-Based PhD online version

The whole of my practice-based PhD can be viewed online here:

http://thesafecigarette.blogspot.co.uk/

The Safe Cigarette: Visual strategies of reassurance in American advertisements for cigarettes: 1945-1964. 

I chose to make limited edition books and multiples for the practical element of my Ph.D. The Safe Cigarette, which I successfully completed in March 2003. 

The thesis identifies specific design and illustration solutions in cigarette advertising such as considerations of artwork, photography, layout, typography, characterisation, and diagrammatic representation of process. The conclusions are then used as the basis for 9 books and multiples in which I explore, within my own artwork, the dynamics of visual instruction, and the devices for reassuring the anxious consumer using irony and humour throughout.

ABSTRACT
This thesis is in two sections, the written element presented as a sequence of eight Fascicles (individually bound thematic books),  and the practical element presented as an inter-related set of Artist’s Books and Multiples.

This thesis presents a series of Artist’s Books and Multiples of graphic expressions of anxiety, each informed by a comparative study presented as a sequence of Volumes of the visual strategies used to advertise cigarettes in America in mass-circulation magazines between 1945 and 1964. The thesis is presented as a boxed object containing the eight Volumes, with Gatefolds and the 9 Artist’s Books and Multiples.

The thesis identifies specific design and illustration solutions in cigarette advertising such as considerations of artwork, photography, layout, typography, characterisation, and diagrammatic representation of process. The conclusions are then used as the basis for 9 books and multiples in which I explore, within my own artwork, the dynamics of visual instruction, and the devices for reassuring the anxious consumer using irony and humour throughout. 
Each Fascicle has a Gatefold visual montage with juxtaposed imagery central to the theme. The thesis combines visual analysis and the making of imagery in equal measure. The vast proportion of original visual examples used in the Fascicles are reproduced for the first time in colour from a wide range of contemporary magazines. Particular emphasis is placed on the professional manuals generated by the advertising profession itself. 

A brief study of the cigarette market in the pre-1945 period identifies early anxieties about the product and how the tobacco industry and the advertising industry sought to address them. The thesis identifies the industries’ invention of the 'Safe Cigarette' and then explores the anxieties implicit in that concept, presenting visual means by which anxiety is depicted. Visual strategies of reassurance in the form of personifiers are compared - ranging from people in socially esteemed professions through to the use of animals (dogs) and visual fictions (Santa Claus).
Two factors in particular have been identified to distract consumers from the gathering sense of unease in the safety of the product that culminated in the report of the American Surgeon General in 1964 - the appeal to the consumption of the cigarette in the outdoors and the corresponding success of menthol cigarettes, and the appeal to the reassurance that technology can impart - in the success of the Filter-Tip market. The twin polarities are reflected in the Artist’s books, 'Which Filter Works?' and 'Menthol Daze'. 

In the last Fascicle the techniques of persuasion after 1945 are compared with those used by the American Huckster of the early twentieth century and the thesis concludes with an assertion of the role that visual humour can play in exposing fallacious marketing. 

THE BOOKS and MULTIPLES
I photographed and documented the artist's books and multiples in a CROM that accompanied the 'tin'. I've now made this available via my blog as a 'stand alone' set of files, this will open in a new window. It includes all the images used in my PhD research, gatefold illustrations along with the books. I have to reconfigured the whole thesis so it can be downloaded digitally or read via ebooks.
The actual 'tin' is held in St.Peter's Library in Brighton and registered at the British Library.

Saturday 20 September 2014

Talk to the Sussex Book Arts Group

I was invited by Dorry Smallman to give a talk about my work to the lovely folks at the Sussex Book Arts Group in Brighton at the Phoenix Gallery. I visited this morning and presented a selection of my artist's books and zines for the group to look through. We had a discussion about themes within my books and zines with particular reference to how satire and humour can highlight social issues. We also talked about production methods, papers, binding and how everyone hates their printer.

For more on the group visit their blog here...http://bookartsinsussex.blogspot.co.uk/






And thanks to Dorry Smallman the group's organiser for the following photos.





Monday 4 August 2014

See my collages being projected at Tate Britain during August!

Damp Flat collages are going to be projected at Tate Britain during the Source Spotlight Display – Texture & Collage month! Images (which are credited), can now be viewed on digital screens as part of the display alongside works in the collection at Tate Britain.

All information is here:
http://www.tate.org.uk/source





Tuesday 8 April 2014

Interview by Gretchen King for TYCI Blog

Gretchen King interviews artist Jackie Batey about her artistic process and influences for TYCI
"The Internet has a magical way of taking one down the rabbit hole during an innocent image search. This holds true with my recent discovery of UK based artist Jackie Batey. While doing a Google image search for ‘vintage b&w zines’ I clicked on an image that intrigued me. This led me down the rabbit hole that turned out to be Jackie’s collection of work." TYCI Blog
 Read the full interview here... http://www.tyci.org.uk/wordpress/interview-jackie-batey/

"TYCI - A collective run by women. We explore and celebrate all things femme, providing an open forum for discussion and a place to share ideas and make connections. We write about things which affect us and put together features on art, theatre, music, film, politics, current affairs and most things in between." From TYCI website.

Wednesday 26 February 2014

HOME now on show at the V and A Museum.


HOME is to be exhibited at the Vand A Museum, London, as part of the display curated by Deborah Sutherland. Building Memories: The Art of Remembering As part of Sky Arts Ignition: Memory Palace.

This is my page contribution:

Monday 6 January 2014

Work in Progress - Library of Withdrawn Books

This is an idea for a series called the Library of Withdrawn Books or the Damp Library of Reimagined Books. I have a collection of vintage drawing and painting how-to guides along with many out dated art books. I wanted to imagine these books have reinvented or altered themselves for an imaginary library. The book contents will remain hidden but the altered covers shows the book has since transformed itself. This may form a series of 'altered covers' or a possible artist's book (catalogue) of withdrawn titles. What happens to all those books that no one else wants?
I want them.

















Many thanks to Dr. Chris Mullen curator of the Culture Archive in Brighton and Jenni and Beth at the The University of Portsmouth Library for sourcing some great 'dead' books and magazines.