Saturday 21 March 2015

Islington, Central Library Workshop

Fifth workshop for the Library Press in Gallery at Central Library on 18th March.
I met some great people and we reused withdrawn library stock with collage to
make new artworks. Thanks to everyone at the library (especially for the kitkats!)

Thanks to Dr. Chris Mullen for donating all the magazines and catalogues for this event and Portsmouth University library for the withdrawn stock to work with.

Next workshops:

Thursday 19 March 6pm – 7.30pm, Kingsbury Library, Brent

Saturday 28th March 1.30pm-3.30pm, Pinner Library, Harrow



Here's some of the artworks produced...











Friday 6 March 2015

Hounslow Library and Torridon Library Workshops

I did my second workshop for the Library Press in Hounslow Library on Thursday 5th March and the third at Torridon Library, Catford on Saturday 7th March.
We had great fun making small folding books and making new artworks. Thanks to everyone at both libraries for providing great spaces and plenty of additional withdrawn books to play with!



Here are some great collaged books by Supreetha, Libby, Fantosh, Suki, Rani








Next workshops:

Wednesday 18 March 6pm – 7.30pm, Gallery at Central Library, Islington

Thursday 19 March 6pm – 7.30pm, Kingsbury Library, Brent

Saturday 28th March 1.30pm-3.30pm, Pinner Library, Harrow

Many thanks to Dr. Chris Mullen for donating all the magazines and catalogues for this event and Portsmouth University library for the withdrawn stock to work with.

The delightful Torridon Library building.

Sunday 1 March 2015

Wimbledon Library workshop for The Library Press


I did my first workshop for the Library Press in Wimbledon Library on Sat 28th Feb.
I met some lovely people and we reused withdrawn library stock with collage to
make new artworks. Thanks to everyone at the library!

Thanks to Dr. Chris Mullen for donating all the magazines and catalogues for this event and Portsmouth University library for the withdrawn stock to work with.

Next workshops:
Thursday 5 March 6pm – 7.30pm, Hounslow Library , Hounslow

Saturday 7 March 2pm – 4pm, Torridon Road Library, Lewisham

Wednesday 18 March 6pm – 7.30pm, Gallery at Central Library, Islington

Thursday 19 March 6pm – 7.30pm, Kingsbury Library, Brent

Saturday 28th March 1.30pm-3.30pm, Pinner Library, Harrow


Here are some great images created during the event by Joy, Brenda and Ursula.









Sunday 1 February 2015

Collage Workshops in London for the Library Press during Feb and March

The Library Press is a new creative community publishing project.
We aim to connect creative individuals and communities with their local library services and engage and inspire new audiences to be creative with writing and publishing. A collaboration between 7 London boroughs, our festival of workshops ranging from how to get started with creative writing and comic books, through to handmaking books, using books for art and advice on self-publishing takes place between February and April 2015. http://www.librarypress.org.uk/


As part of this festival, I'll be running a series of collage workshops in London Boroughs:

Saturday 28th February 2pm-4pm, Wimbledon Library, Merton

Thursday 5 March 6pm – 7.30pm, Hounslow Library , Hounslow

Saturday 7 March 2pm – 4pm, Torridon Road Library, Lewisham

Wednesday 18 March 6pm – 7.30pm, Gallery at Central Library, Islington

Thursday 19 March 6pm – 7.30pm, Kingsbury Library, Brent

Saturday 28th March 1.30pm-3.30pm, Pinner Library, Harrow


About the workshops:

If your life were a book what would the cover look like?

We’ll be exploring life stories and remembered incidents using withdrawn library books in this collage workshop. Withdrawn library books are usually thrown away – but they have been through many hands before ours and they convey on their covers the wear and tear of a well loved object. As humans we also show our wear and tear over time – but we can use old book covers to share our life experiences, our humour and our creativity. We will be breathing new life into unwanted books by creating new artworks with them.

Materials will be provided but you could also bring things with you if you wish, like old photos, or ephemera (like old tickets, letters, scraps), maybe even your favourite writing or drawing materials. Or any old images from magazines or books that you’d be happy to cut up to collage with.

No previous experience is necessary just allow yourself some time and space to play with your ideas, unwanted books and let your creativity flow. If you want to join me, just pop along at the times, libraries listed above.



For more about The Library Press:
http://www.librarypress.org.uk/

To see more of my collages made with withdrawn library books:
https://withdrawnbooks.wordpress.com/



Wednesday 21 January 2015

The British Library are going to archive Future Fantasteek!

Great news! The British Library are going to archive my Future Fantasteek! for the future
...how fantasteek.


The British Library would like to archive the following website:



The British Library would like to archive your website in the UK Web Archive. The UK Web Archive was established in 2004 to capture and archive websites from the UK domain, responding to the challenge of a ‘digital black hole’ in the nation’s memory. It contains specially selected websites that represent different aspects of online life in the UK. We work closely with leading UK institutions to collect and permanently preserve the UK web, and our archive can be seen at http://www.webarchive.org.uk/

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.