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The Blue Notebook Volume 6 No.2 April 2012 1 The Blue Notebook is published in two formats: an online colour version, and a paper, black and white version. An annual subscription covers both formats for two issues, UK or international. For subscriptions, please download the form on our publications page: www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/bnotebk.htm or contact us for a postal form. We welcome submissions of writing on contemporary artists’ books and related issues for The Blue Notebook. Please email [email protected] for guidelines or see: www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/bnotebk.htm Artists’ contributions are by invitation from the Art Editor, Tom Sowden. The Blue Notebook journal for artists’ books is published by Wild Conversations Press, Bristol www.wildconversations.isophia.co.uk Editor: Sarah Bodman Art Editor: Tom Sowden Design: Sarah Bodman and Tom Sowden Cover design: Tom Sowden Editorial address: Impact Press at the Centre for Fine Print Research UWE Bristol, Kennel Lodge Road, Bristol, BS3 2JT, UK Tel: +44 (0)117 328 4915 Fax: +44 (0)117 328 5865 [email protected] [email protected] www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk The Blue Notebook Vol.6 No.2 April 2012 ISSN 1751-1712 (print) ISSN 1751-1720 (online) © 2012 publication, Impact Press © 2012 texts, individual authors © 2012 images, individual artists Permission to photocopy texts for personal use, one-off educational use in study packs, or for individual academic study is granted. For any other use, please contact the editor and the individual author or artist for their authorisation. The views expressed within The Blue Notebook are not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. 2 Contents Artist’s page - Cath Fairgrieve 4 Introduction Sarah Bodman 5 Domestic details in the photographic artist’s book Jane Simon 7 Artist’s page - Christa Harris 15 The Survival Of Letterpress In Australia Ampersand Duck 17 The Poetic Archive: Photography, Everyday Life and the Tactic of Self-Publishing Adam Murray 27 Artist’s page - Nicolas Frespech 35 The Book of Laughing and Crying Tim Mosely 37 Artist’s page - Jon Dunning 43 Rebirth Of The Book And The Rise Of Artists’ Publishing A Williams 45 Artwork Contributors 50 Referees’ Biographies 51 Artist’s page - Alexandra Czinczel 52 3 4 Welcome to issue twelve of The Blue Notebook Many thanks to the artists who accepted Tom Sowden’s Many thanks to our writers for an inspiring selection of invitation to produce artwork for this issue: essays for this issue, in order of appearance: Alexandra Czinczel, Jon Dunning, Cath Fairgrieve, Jane Simon considers the book form’s juncture with Nicolas Frespech and Christa Harris. And thanks to photography as a place for looking differently at domestic Tom Sowden for this issue’s ‘laser cut’ cover design. detail. Her essay explores the effects of Anna Fox’s use of the [very] small book form upon the viewer’s mode Thank you to our referees, Dr Anne Béchard-Léauté of looking at the domestic. Fox’s book works My Mother’s (France) Maria Fusco (UK) Susan Johanknecht (UK), Cupboards and My Father’s Words (2000) and Cockroach Jeff Rathermel (USA), Dr Paulo Silveira (Brazil) and Diary (2000) concentrate upon domestic habitats and Ulrike Stoltz (Germany) for their continual duties. the people and objects that move through them. Vol 7 No.1 comes out in October 2012. Ampersand Duck in Canberra, Australia provides a showcase of letterpress printing activity in her local We welcome your ideas for articles for future issues - geographic area, in relation to the wider national and submission guidelines can be found on our website at: international transformation of letterpress printing from www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/bnotebk.htm a bibliographic by-product of commercial output to an art and design genre that is gaining a new following and The address for the online colour version of this issue is: a new audience. www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/blue_notebook/ Adam Murray on ‘Preston is my Paris’, co-founded by 0207/0331/9959/TBN12.pdf Murray and Robert Parkinson in June 2009. The project originally began as a photocopied zine specifically And finally, many thanks to you, all our readers focussing on the city of Preston in the UK, but has since and contributors for your ongoing support for developed into a multi-faceted photographic archive The Blue Notebook through sending ideas for essays, consisting of 40 self-published works that address themes articles, reviews and artworks, and of course subscribing. relating to everyday life and social consciousness. In contrast to other photographic investigations of everyday life which often result in gallery exhibitions or lavishly produced books, Murray and Parkinson Sarah Bodman intentionally appropriate vernacular methods of production and print materials such as photocopying and newsprint with the aim to produce an archive that deliberately intends to engage with an audience beyond the conventional art world. Murray discusses this body of work and the role that the tactic of self-publishing has in a contemporary photographic context. Tim Mosely seeks to contribute to the emerging critical discourse on artists’ books by locating the “haptic” within the making and reading of books by artists. In his article Reading by Hand: the Haptic evaluation of artists’ books Gary Frost writes about “touch as a mode of communication” and identifies the haptic as new aspect of the discourse. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their seminal text A Thousand Plateaus bind the haptic to “smooth space” within creative practices. Their theoretical framework and critical terminology of the haptic warrants an application to artist’s book practices. A Williams proposes an argument for Artists’ Publishing as a theoretical vehicle to move toward a terminology/ taxonomy reconciling artists’ books practices with new media developments and shifting attitudes to the ‘Book’ in the digital age. 5 Fig. 1, Cover: My Mother’s Cupboards and My Father’s Words © Anna Fox, courtesy James Hyman Gallery, London and Tasveer Arts, Bangalore. The actual book measures 7.5 x 10 cm Top left to right: Figures 2 and 3, Bottom left to right: Figures 4 and 5. Four page spreads from: Anna Fox My Mother’s Cupboards and My Father’s Words 2000 © Anna Fox, courtesy James Hyman Gallery, London and Tasveer Arts, Bangalore. The actual book measures 7.5 x 10 cm 6 Domestic details in the photographic artist’s book photograph and a viewer – a disappearance enabled by the popularity of the large scale print – he makes the Jane Simon important point that ‘modern gallery spaces long ago abandoned the domestic interior as their model and have adopted instead the scale and antiseptic aesthetic of the This article considers the juncture of the book form with showroom or the warehouse’ (2002, 250). The gallery as photography as a place for looking closely at domestic showroom with massive photographic prints is ridiculed detail. Anna Fox’s book works My Mother’s Cupboards by Moyra Davey who views it as ‘the art world at its most and My Father’s Words (2000) and Cockroach Diary (2000) absurd: Mount Rushmore-scale pieties, dwarfed only concentrate upon domestic habitats and the people by the deafening ka-ching of the cash register’ (2008, and objects that move through them. Fox’s concern 114). The influence of galleries is one factor that impacts with documenting her own family’s lived-in spaces and the scale of imagery (Wells, 2004, 291). The need for domestic rituals in My Mother’s Cupboards and My Father’s photographic art to be noticed amidst the epic scale Words and Cockroach Diary is accompanied by an attention of works displayed in large international art festivals is to the works’ scale and to how a photographic project another reason for the tendency for photographic art designed as a book asks us to look differently at objects, to be large. And of course changes in photographic practices and behaviours in the domestic realm. printing technologies, which have made printing larger Fig. 1, Cover: My Mother’s Cupboards and My Father’s Words These two small books train our gaze on the overlooked sizes easier, have facilitated the shift towards large scale © Anna Fox, courtesy James Hyman Gallery, London and Tasveer Arts, Bangalore. The actual book measures 7.5 x 10 cm and provide an opportunity to consider the relationship photographic artworks (Moschovi, 2008, 146). between domestic interiority, autobiography and detail in photography. While photographs are reproducible to various sizes, ‘in actuality they usually come to us with quite particular Fox’s photographic practice places her amongst dimensions, for quite particular reasons (technical, documentary photographers who focus on their own commercial, aesthetic)’ (Batchen 2002, 253).1 Too or familiar everyday spaces, habits and relationships often, it seems, the particular dimensions have to do rather than documenting the world of others from the with commercial imperatives, although of course perspective of an outsider. Val Williams aptly describes specific works and artists do employ large-scale prints Fox’s photography as being attuned to ‘ordinary secrets’ thoughtfully. Davey, for example, highlights Hannah (2007,11), the commonly experienced, but often Wilke’s Intra-Venus series with its enormous photographs undocumented or unspoken about elements of daily life. of the effects of cancer treatment on Wilke’s own body as Fox directs our attention to those elements of domestic ‘one of the rare instances where large-scale photography life – the dust and the cockroaches – that remain seems to be justified’ (2008, 95). Imre Szeman & Maria invisible in more celebratory or romantic discussions Whiteman make a case that Edward Burtynsky’s and or images of domestic interiority. Her work can be Andreas Gursky’s ‘big pictures are attempts to map the placed amongst the history of women artists, filmmakers big picture’, by using massive scale to force viewers to and writers who have been concerned with what is confront the immense effect of globalisation (2009, 554).