Artist Books part 1 talk by Angie Butler, part of Pushing Print

Angie Butler in Droit House.

I was able to go to a series of very good talks about artists books held in Droit House and part of the Pushing print festival in Margate.

Angie Butler gave the first talk I went to and she spoke about a wide range of artists producing books often in collaboration with others and had a great selection of artists books for us to handle and illustrate her talk.
Angie talked about John Bentley and the Liver and Lights Scriptorium, website here.
I enjoyed hearing about his project  Liver & Lights No 43. The People.

John Bentley's cards from The People.

  
Where  John made work, portraits of people who had shared his life in someway and people for whom he could recall an anecdote. Inspired by pre-war cigarette cards he produced a set of collectible cards.
Angie had a set of his cards that we could handle and I followed up by looking at his work on the Liver&Lights website.

Book by Andi Mc Garry.

Another artist I followed up after Angie talked about his work  was Andi McGarry and the Sun, Moon and Stars press. Andi hand paints his books and they retain a very free expressive and colourful sense . He and John Bentley made a video together talking about each other and their work.  Video here

Angie also talked a bit about some of her own projects including Your Place/My Place, with Philippa Wood

 A project where she exchanged pictures, info and text about her home with Philippa Wood.
This lead to a book being produced and blogs about the project.

From her blog site Angie writes that the project  is "An online 'tour' of our own houses, and an accompanying artist's book that focuses on an intimate selection of the tour. We hope that by acknowledging the past, discussing the present and investing in the future we not only develop our own relationship, but aim to raise an awareness of how we are connected to the places where we live, and to understand the psychology that underpins our furnishings, decor and household adornments. Our conversations are shown in the comments boxes."    Blog here 

Well worth looking at.

Another of Angie's projects I really enjoyed hearing about was her "Another Old Lady".

This project lead to a book that celebrated Angie's love of typography and letterpress. I loved the inventiveness of her fish and chip inspired book.

Angie writes in her blog

" As we have all been working with given titles from Sarah Bodman's artists book, "An Exercise for Kurt Johannessen', I wanted to uphold the admiration for another's work, and I remembered a text from Andrew Wilson's book, Text Messages', a book of 100 text message poems, No.88 Old Lady Eating A Fish"

Angie's blog about this project is here  

I came away reinspired to engage with some of my own artists books left unfinished and with some new ideas.



 

Pushing Print in Margate

 

The annual Pushing Print Festival started Friday night with several galleries in Margate holding exhibitions. Pushing Print website here  The Pie Factory Gallery held a private view showing a wide range of entrants to the Pushing print Open.

 I really enjoyed the selection which included a wide range of techniques including Sarah Gillett's Earthquake, mono prints on torn off papers collaged on the walls.  I liked the sense  of the powerful nature of an earthquake separating objects and places and the wall paper giving a sense of walls destroyed by the elements.  Sarah's website here 

Jian Zhou's impressively large wood cut, There is a Personal Space. This is a No Smoking Area  had a sense of mystery to me. The trees and rain and circular marks evoked a type of elemental place. It was something you could look at for a long time. Jian Zhou's site here
The Pie Factory Gallery exhibition is open from Saturday 5th – Sunday 20th October. Pie Factory website here

On Saturday a road roller was in the Old Town for a giant printmaking event where a lot of families were enjoying making large prints, pressed by the road roller.

There are a series of talks and workshops running with places left, which are on the pushing print website.

Sliding House installation by Alex Chinneck in Margate

I went up to Cliftonville today to look at artist Alex Cinneck's new art work," From the knees of my nose to the belly of my toes" Which is a four storey house in Godwin road where the facade appears to be sliding down to the ground.

The artist was there being interviewed and photographed by his house. It is a striking piece, and people were stopping in their cars to look. Alex Chinneck has said he likes to use materials in un expected ways, like using the solid material of brick in a seemingly fluid way.

The house was compulsorary purchased by the council after being empty and derelict for 11years.
After the installation has been on show for a year the house will be converted back to a home to live in.

I like the homour in the work and the way it leads to questions about housing and homes and about areas like Cliftonville where there are a lot of lovely period properties slowly becoming derelict.