Title

A Suitcase for London.

Author

Grahame, Noreen.

Publication date

1997

Type

Conference paper

Language

English

Country of context

Australian

Full text

A Suitcase for London.
By Noreen Grahame

I'm off to London to exhibit at the London Artists' Books Fair. The books have been packed and crated and freighted and all that remains is to pack my suitcase.

You know what it's like packing that suitcase for a week in London. It will be November, so in go the woollies and the raincoat, then a pair of good walking shoes (not your runners, the wet and the cold seep through them, and they are a dead give away that you're a tourist), so a pair, or even better two pairs, of good walking shoes, plus a pair of elegant shoes for evening. I'll need day wear, evening wear, sleep wear, and last but not least seven pairs of undies.

Everything's ready, but then the doubts set in. Maybe I should take some more catalogues from the artists' books + multiples fair in Brisbane and perhaps extra copies of books. The phone rings, it's another book for London. I look at the suitcase. Out comes the evening wear and those elegant shoes, along with most of the woollies, but I do draw the line at the undies.

slide 1
1 set out for London carrying Colin Reany's Extended Postmodern Reader in its 1.7m case and an umbrella for the London weather. Next stop Heathrow and the fair.

The 1996 London Artists' Books Fair was staged at the Barbican centre in the Concourse Gallery, a half moon shaped passageway embracing the outside of several venues within the centre.

slide 2
Starting from the main entrance, we'll head off to reach stand 64, temporary home to Numero Uno Publications and Grahame Galleries + Editions. If we spend 1 minute at every stand along the way, it would take a little over an hour, but Roger has been quite adamant and given us only 15 minutes, so this will be a whirlwind tour.

slide 3
Our first stop is Telfer Stokes' and Helen Douglas' Weproductions at stand 3. Thiswas a typical stand, 2.5 metres wide by 1 metre deep. With one table and one chair provided. Tables were covered with a calico drape. The day we were setting up a fire warden expressed some concern as to whether these calico drapes were fire resistant. I piped up with the comment that perhaps people shouldn't smoke. Everyone laughed, and nobody believed that smoking is prohibited in public buildings in Australia.

Telfer Stokes and Helen Douglas have been publishing under Weproductions since the early seventies, first in London and now from their base in Scotland.

Also at their stand one could be lucky enough to meet up with Joan Lyons of the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York. It wasn't perchance they were sharing a space. In 1987 the Visual Studies Workshop published

slide 4
Real Fiction by Douglas and Stokes. As its subtitle, An Inquiry into the Bookeresque, points out,

slide 5
Real Fiction inquires into the actual construction of the book and questions what is real and what is fictional. 700 unnumbered copies were published.

Stokes crossed the Atlantic again in 1989 to co publish Desire with Nexus Press of Atlanta.

slide 6
Desire is a sensuous book of transcribed tape recordings and stolen shots of peoples' faces held together by a grid of fencing wire. The halftone images are printed in saturated colour and make up 16 colour sections with the first and last pages glued to the

slide 7
raffia cover. Published in an edition of 800 unnumbered copies in a square format (14.5 x l4.5cm).

Stand 13 housed John Dilnot's books.

slide 8
I bought saplings a little concertina book with rubberstamps of, you guessed it, saplings.

slide 9 It has a corrugated card cover. The edition was 100 and it is only 7.5 x 3.6cm.

slide 10 Across the passageway at stand 18 we find Tony Credland from the University of Portsmouth and CACTUS Network. This was one of five Universities, all British, represented at the fair. All are heavily involved with publishing artists' books and all maintained it was essential for them to participate in the fair.

slide 11
Almost adjacent at stand 23 was The University of Derby's Research Group for Artists Publications which publishes artists' books, editions and multiples. RGAP won funding from the European Commission in two consecutive years to co ordinate projects. Their latest project DISPATCH & RECEIPT was a six week workshop which involved both making and distributing original work published by the participants. Ten residencies were offered to young artists from European universities, working at graduate or postgraduate level, to come to Derby and work alongside students. The emphasis of the workshop was on making new work in a form that was capable of distribution - such as books, editions or other multiple objects - with the intention of developing new approaches and alternative audiences.

At their stand they offered visitors a choice of three little publications from about twenty on show. All were made by students. I picked out four and then read the sign properly. I was about to return one, but was in a quandary, which one should I put back, when Martin Rogers, in charge of the stand, tapped me on the shoulder and very kindly said I could keep all four. Martin told me that they market their book through commercial outlets such as Hardware Gallery.

Next stop is stand 25 to see Ti Parks whose bookworks are not unknown in Australia. Ti made me a present of

slide 12
hardcrosline a small mute book made up of 6 sheets of blank white paper folded four times, bundled together and sewn with waxed threads. This book is not to be opened. It is 7.7cm high x 5.6cm wide and was published in 1991 in an edition of 24.

Next door we find Morning Star Publications from Edinburgh established by Alex Finlay, Ian Hamilton Finlay's son. He publishes mostly collaborations between artists and poets. I bought a

slide 13 Kurt Schwitters' Merzhanky a small square envelope containing a paper tissue. Printed on the tissue is a Schwitters' tone poem Die Wut des Niesens, which translates as The Sneeze's Fury.

On to stand 34 and we've over the halfway mark.

slide 14
Here we meet Mark Pawson who stocked his own publications along with books from Le Demier Cri and Kunst. For very little money I bought

slide 15 Snacks an open ended edition which is a compilation of lost and found animal notices. Each copy is different, but all had a real Luv Dog biscuit on the cover. No 1 was published in 1993, 1 bought No 890 published Sept 28 1996.

Here are a couple of the notices from my copy of Snacks;
Lost
French bulldog named Bizet. David, I lost contact. Please call. If anyone knows David, please tell him to call.
I just want to know how is Bizet doing.

One of my favourites was for a bottle nosed dolphin named Amber which 'took a leap from our swimming pool and headed for freedom'.

At stand 42A I caught up with Deirdre Kelly of Hardware Gallery which, since it move to new premises in 1993, stocks a vast range of British artists' books. Hardware does not have a publishing programme, but Deirdre swapped their only publication to date

slide 16
COLMANIA by Les Colman for a copy of the Brisbane artists'books + multiples fair catalogue. COLMANIA presents Colman's view of the world with sayings, such as,

Three of the migrating ducks were made of earthenware.

In the same vicinity at stand 46 was Book Works which has been publishing artists' books since 1987. Books Works receives generous financial assistance from the Arts Council of Great Britain and the London Arts Board.

slide 17
VERY FOOD by Silvia Ziranek was Book Works first book. Published in a standard edition of 750 copies and a special edition of 50.

slide 18
This is the special edition with cloth cover and inset photographs. VERY FOOD contains 22 dishes accompanied by the artist's photographs as well as a

slide 19
loose print.

slide 20 In 1990 Guidelines to the System by Verdi Yahooda was published. Printed offset litho with a series of duotone images. slide 21
It uses a pillar binding with a folded and stitched spine.

Their 1991 book was

slide 22
Pavel Büchler's Notable Days. Büchler uses details of news images and the conventions of the calendar to look at ways in which historical events are reported and recorded.

slide 23
The newspaper photographs are blown up out of all proportion just as some reporting is. Notable Days was published in an edition of 700 standard copies plus a special edition of 52 with silver edged pages.

We move along now to

slide 24
Grahame Galleries + Editions stand. We were next door to the only other Australian representative, Adele Boag of Main Street Editions, and adjacent to the other only other entrance. Fire precautions necessitated entry areas be uncluttered, which was great as it gave us some breathing space as well as providing an area to talk to people and show larger books. It became an unofficial performance space.

The books we exhibited ranged from one of a kind to limited editions to open ended editions. Also included were artists' books with computer generated images, and it was interesting to note that I didn't see many other computer generated books at the fair.
Here is a small selection from the suitcase.
slide 25
Blackboard Drawings by Georgina Duckett, is a book of thirteen computer generated images referring to blackboard drawings published in an edition of 8.

slide 26
This collaborative work by Michael Kempson and Matthew Tome Mister Funbags is made up of 8 screenprinted and embossed pages, each of which is an exploration of the creative potential of the contents of a supermarket trolley where High Art embraces the contrived rhetoric of product packaging. It is 60.0 x 40.5cm in an edition of 6.

slide 27
Karen Papacek, an Australian artist now living in France, sent until when a concertina book of linocuts about the folie of an unquestioning belief in genetic engineering. It has black serge covers with a home pinned to front cover. Published in an edition of 10 it is 17.0 x 13.0 cm.

slide 28
Another computer generated book SOLOMON by Jan Davis. This seven volume book

slide 29
explores language and space in the context of the Solomon Islands. It combines certain aspects of concrete poetry with historical and contemporary image and texts. This is an immensely rich creation and very rewarding for the viewer/reader. The seven volumes are contained in a slip case which stands 14.6 x l3.8cm.

slide 30
Brisbane artist, Adele Outteridge, made this book from used bus tickets sewn together.

slide 31
This is an ongoing project as the artists produces these untitled books when she has sufficient used tickets.

slide 32
A found Chinese picture story was the starting point for this one of a kind book by another Brisbane artist, Madonna Staunton. The text has been altered by layering lettreset, rubberstamps and hand colour, and sets up a new narrative. The covers are weathered scrap timber.

slide 33
The Master Said by Lansheng Zhang now living in Canberra is a book of ten chapters rolled like cigarettes and contained in a cigarette packet. Each chapter is a quote of a philosophical, scientific, political or religious nature. The Master Said is an open ended edition.

slide 34
As I mentioned the area in front of our stand became something of an unofficial performance space. On the Saturday this young man set up to play on a musical instrument made of ice. He placed a plastic mouth piece into the ice and wearing gloves proceeded to produce some extraordinary musical notes. The performance coming to an end when the ice fell apart, and on this note we conclude our tour.

© Noreen Grahame, 1997. Paper presented at The Third Australian Print Symposium, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1997.

Last Updated

02 Dec 2024