Saturday 28 December 2013

I See You Everywhere


I am curating two exhibitions to celebrate 25 years of limited editions issued by Zitouna, an imprint run by the artist Roni Gross in New York. Since 1989 Zitouna has produced a limited edition object for Valentine's Day and Hallowe'en every year. The Zitouna projects divide themselves between the themes of love and death, whether it be the mating of toothbrushes or the alchemy of a person's life. For an advance preview of some of the works on show, click here.

The first exhibition, I See You Everywhere: Works From Zitouna Press Over 25 Years, will show at the Arnolfini Reading Room in Bristol from 1 February until 2 March 2014. This will present a survey of works made for Valentine's Day.

The second exhibition, They Cast No Shadows: Works From Zitouna Press Over 25 Years, comprising the Hallowe'en editions, will show at the Special Collections of the Centre for Fine Print Research at the University of the West of England during October 2014.


Friday 15 November 2013

Hawthornden Fellowship


I will be away until the end of the year on a fellowship at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland. Hawthornden was the birthplace and home of the seventeenth-century poet William Drummond, and since then it has served as retreat to innumerable writers, giving them space to finish old projects and begin new ones.

I will be completing a collection of poems about the Arctic and working on a new song cycle Quujaavaarssuq and the Queen of the Sea. The latter is based on the legendary journey of the Greenlandic hero Quujaavaarssuq to beg forgiveness from the Queen of the Sea, who destroyed the ice as an act of revenge on the humans who pollute her waters.

There is no internet access at Hawthornden, but I will resume posting in January 2014. The new year holds some exciting new projects, including two book publications and the unveiling of Vantar | Missing, an fictional history of avalanches in Iceland.

Thursday 14 November 2013

Beyond Words


How To Say I Love You In Greenlandic: An Arctic Alphabet will be on display in the exhibition Beyond Words: Artists and Translation at Amelie Gallery in Beijing. The exhibition opens on 15 November and continues until 20 December, after which it will tour in the Asia Pacific region.

Wednesday 16 October 2013

The Third Thing


I like riddles. Perhaps Gollum's 'Voiceless it cries, / Wingless flutters, / Toothless bites, / Mouthless mutters' in The Hobbit was the first I encountered. Then the far more ancient, suggestive kenning of Anglo-Saxon riddles from the Exeter BookThe equivocal scraps, stones and body parts that voice the works of the poet Vasco Popa

Writing a riddle demands concision, yet the frame of reference must be universal. Why title any poem with anything but a question mark? When I start writing about one thing, I soon notice that I’m describing another. A small object takes on a greater significance. This same shape-shifting perspective may be what draws me to Inuit ivory sculpture, tiny objects that from one angle may be a polar bear, from another, a human being. You head out in one direction, but find yourself somewhere unexpected.

It was a great honour when Frances and Nicolas McDowall of the Old Stile Press contacted me to ask permission to use my translation of one of the riddles from the Exeter Book in a new anthology of writings on water.

The Third Thing is a selection of poems with woodcut images by Ralph Kiggell. Water and swimming have featured strongly in Kiggell’s life and when the Old Stile Press commissioned a second book to follow his hugely successful Leading the Cranes Home (2006) it was only natural that the subject should be ‘water’.

A generous slideshow of pages from the book can be seen on the Old Stile Press website, where the publishers write:

"Roger Deakin, the author of Waterlog, linked the passion to swim to our body’s mystical sympathy for water: ‘When you swim, you feel your body for what it mostly is - water.’ However, swimming was not to be the focus of the book and Ralph allowed himself to explore poems and prose from across different ages and cultures. Writers have shown us that from sea to land to cloud and back to sea, the cycle of water encapsulates history and life itself. ... There are driving shafts of rain, frozen crystals, rivers which support teeming life on boats, clouds heavy with impending downpours. All derive from D.H. Lawrence’s wonder at the unknowable ‘third thing’ that, with an oxygen atom and two of hydrogen, completes the mystery of water."
Other poets in his selection include Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Padraic Colum and John Masefield. As well as the riddle, I have contributed a new poem, written in collaboration with Anna Zvegintzov, ‘The Last Assignment’.
The book can be purchased from the Old Stile Press. Main Edition: ISBN 978-0-907664-89-5 £340 (plus p&p); 
Special Edition: £1250 (plus p&p).

Tuesday 8 October 2013

LMH Oxford Residency - Talk


My year as Artist in Residence at Lady Margaret Hall is now under way. I've been working in the library on the early stages of a print series which will combine my interest in Arctic landscapes with a response to the college site. I visit Bristol next week to meet with Arthur Buxton at the Centre for Fine Print Research, who will be advising me on the project.
More on this scheme as it develops. Meanwhile I will be giving a public talk to introduce my work at the end of the month. All are welcome, whether members of the university or not. 

No More Words for Snow: Arctic Alphabets
Nancy Campbell will discuss the influence of the vanishing languages and landscapes of the Arctic on her work. This illustrated talk will reflect on poetry and artist’s books created during residencies at institutions including the most northern museum in the world on the remote island of Upernavik in Greenland.

Refreshments will be served.

Venue: Old Library, Lady Margaret Hall, Norham Gardens, Oxford, OX2 6QA. 
Date: Friday 25 October 2013
Time: 5.15pm

Tuesday 17 September 2013

The London Art Book Fair


How To Say 'I Love You' In Greenlandic: An Arctic Alphabet 
was represented by KALEID Editions at The London Art Book Fair at the Whitechapel Gallery earlier this month. The image below shows my book surrounded by book works by artists including Tamarin Norwood, Victoria Browne and Rose Smith. 


The Birgit Skiöld Award for Excellence was awarded to 
How To Say 'I Love You' In Greenlandic during the fair. As a result of the award, the book has been acquired by the Victoria & Albert Museum. The award was presented by Elizabeth James, Senior Librarian in the V&A's Word and Image Department.


UDKANT, made in collaboration with Mette Sofie D. Ambeck
during my residency at Doverodde Book Arts Center Denmark, 
was acquired by the Tate Gallery, London.



Saturday 24 August 2013

Hot Metal and Frozen Paper


Next week I'll be in Dundee, origin and last resting place of the Discovery, the ship on which Robert Falcon Scott and his companions sailed for their ill-fated Antarctic expedition.

But I will be talking about printing at the other end of the earth... I'm due to present a paper at IMPACT 8, the biennial print conference that this time around will take as its theme 'Borders & Crossings: The Artist As Explorer'. How could I resist?

Here's the abstract for my paper, for those of you who can't make the conference. 



Hot Metal And Frozen Paper: Printing in Arctic Greenland 

And if the sun had not erased the tracks upon the ice,

they would tell us of the polar bears and the men who caught them.

(Obituary of a great Inuit hunter, 19th Century)

In 2010 Nancy Campbell travelled to the most northern museum in the world – Upernavik Museum in Greenland. Her residency resulted in an extensive body of graphic work on the vanishing languages and landscapes of the Arctic, including three limited-edition artists’ books: How To Say ‘I Love You’ In Greenlandic (Bird Editions) and The Night Hunter and Tikilluarit (Z’roah Press).


Historically the Inuit ‘read’ tracks on the ice rather than marks on paper. But Arctic explorers brought a new form of communication – the book – to Greenland’s shores. Nancy will briefly trace the history of the printing press in Greenland since its introduction in the late eighteenth century, addressing the difficulty of printing in remote and extreme conditions, the problems of representing new languages using old alphabets, and the reception of early printed material by the indigenous population.


Is there any possible dialogue between the printmaker, with her desire for permanent marks on paper, and the historical hunter, with his reverence for temporal tracks upon the ice? Nancy will discuss the challenges of using different print processes (letterpress, pochoir, screen print) to respond to an oral culture that has traditionally seen print media as part of an unwelcome colonial heritage. She will demonstrate how the disappearing Arctic environment informed the design choices behind How To Say ‘I Love You’ In Greenlandic and The Night Hunter, and how the print processes and the form of these books address issues of environmental and cultural extinction.


Tuesday 20 August 2013

KALEID 2013 LONDON




How To Say 'I Love You' In Greenlandic: An Arctic Alphabet was selected by an international jury for representation by KALEID 2013 LONDON. The book was one of 50 ‘best artists’ books’ exhibited at the launch event at the Art Academy in July (pictured). I am delighted to announce that it will go on to be one of the 15 titles represented by KALEID EDITIONS at The London Art Book Fair at the Whitechapel Gallery on 13-15 September 2013.



Saturday 29 June 2013

Summer Exhibitions: Brighton, New York, London


I will be showing work in Making Tracks, the summer exhibition at The ONCA Gallery, Brighton. Earlier this year I was commissioned by artist Pete Lally to write a poem for his Suitcase Library, a collection of miniature books. My poem 'Obituary' is now available as one of the letterpress-printed library titles, which will be on display at ONCA.

'Obituary' will be shown alongside The Night Hunter - the artists' book designed and executed by Roni Gross and Peter Schell in response to my poem of the same title.



Meanwhile the latest book from Z'roah Press, Tikilluarit (Roni Gross's imaginative setting of my poem 'The Hunter Teaches Me To Speak') will be exhibited at Poet's House in New York as part of Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, a group show of artists' responses to violence in Iraq. Tikilluarit, a recent finalist in the MCBA Prize, is currently on show at The Cambridge Arts Council, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Finally, How To Say I Love You In Greenlandic: An Arctic Alphabet has been selected for KALEID 2013 London. The chosen books will be on show to the public at The Art Academy on Saturday 20th July 2013. The book will also be part of group exhibitions in Beijing and New Zealand during the autumn and winter: watch this space.