Publish And Be Damned

This weekend I took a little research trip to London Town and visited a couple of book fairs....Publish and Be Damned, a self-publishing event, in Bethnal Green and The London Artist Book Fair at the Whitechapel Gallery. Publish and be damned was really buzzing, with about 100 stalls selling hand made zines and books...Some were beautifully printed and were very inspiring...some were hilarious and very rude! I liked the Do It Yourself vibe at the event and the fact that most of the publications were under £5. Good for pocket-sized presents for Miss Sophie Lee! It also got me thinking about reviving the long-lost but not forgotten Dance Picture Zine... The Artists Book Fair at Whitechapel featured faves Coracle press, Wild Pansy Press and good old Manchester School of Art's Righton Press....The books in the show were very impressive...IvoryPress showing some enormous bound beauties and Tracey Emin with her lovely One Thousand Drawings book was drawing in the crowds....I returned home with lots of brilliant bits and bobs and a nice new book bag!

Manchester Book Fair

We have a table at The Manchester Artists Book Fair in November! Its going to be exciting!Check out more info here....http://www.artdes.mmu.ac.uk/rightonpress/bookfair/

Summer In The City

Whilst Sophie and I were on our travels this summer we came across this brilliant exhibition in Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid. The show consisted of works from Madrid's Figurative Movement in the 1970s. The movement was made up of a group of artists dubbed the Schizos because of their theoretical underpinnings. We loved the exhibition because these Schizos distributed their work through fanzines, newsletters and handmade books! There were cabinets rammed full of them...each one beautifully made and often hilarious! There were also photographs, paintings and drawings that seemed to all have the a skewed vision of Madrid and Spain in that period. ( Spain was just coming out of the Franco regime at that point.) Most of the stuff was popartesque, because of its colour and liveliness. The show even featured Ed Ruscha and Richard Hamilton, But was mostly dominated by the work of Carlos Alcolea, Herminio Molero and Javier Utray. If you are interested in fanzines and art distribution you should definitely check out these names!