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.

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.

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.

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.

KALEID 2013 LONDON

KALEID 2013 London will showcase the best of artists' books to an international audience of collectors. KALEID editions works closely with librarians, private book dealers and individual collectors, to advocate public special collections and promote artists' books as an interdisciplinary activity.

I'm delighted that How To Say 'I Love You' In Greenlandic has been selected from over 200 submissions for KALEID 2013 London. KALEID editions will be exhibiting book works from Spain, UK, Ireland, Norway, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland and Norway. This prestigious annual event, established in 2011, is an opportunity for creative practitioners and invited collectors to view singular book works. The international jury comprised Sofie Dederen (Frans Masereel Centrum for Print, Belgium), Elizabeth James (Word and & Image Department, National Art Library, V&A Museum, UK) and David Senior (MoMA Library, USA).

KALEID welcomes visitors to the public event on Saturday 20th July. Follow this year's progress on #KALEID2013London.

Awards and acquisitions will be held during a private event on Friday 19th July, supported by The Art Academy, Frans Masereel Centrum, the British National Art Library and English Arts Council’s Saison Poetry Library. 

A selection of twenty five books will be represented by KALEID editions during The London Art Book Fair at The Whitechapel Gallery, 13-15 September 2013.

How To Say 'I Love You' In Greenlandic at Bookartbookshop, London

Thanks to everyone who came along to the private view of my exhibition in the window of Bookartbookshop on Friday night. It was wonderful to see so many old friends and meet new ones.

Anna served canapés inspired by How To Say 'I Love You' In Greenlandic. The onigiri - or Japanese rice balls - looked like snowballs with colourful fillings. The Greenlandic language doesn't appear to have a word for 'rice ball' but I was pleased to find an equivalent so that we could provide a Greenlandic menu, with translations for the English-speakers present.

The exhibition continues until 29 November, to be followed by a new work by Tom Phillips, creator of A Humument, the altered book to end all altered books. Phillips' work has featured in some of my recent workshops, and I'm excited to see what he does next with the book form.

How To Say I Love You In Greenlandic at Bookartbookshop

I'm delighted to be exhibiting How To Say 'I Love You' In Greenlandic: An Arctic Alphabet at London's wonderful Bookartbookshop. Readers who have yet to visit this cavern of bibliographic enchantments can feast their eyes on the panoramic view of the shop floor, below. 



The exhibition will open on Friday 16 November and runs until 29 November. 

There is a Private View on Friday 16 November from 18.oo - 22.00, during which copies of How To Say 'I Love You' In Greenlandic will be on sale, and a range of Greenlandic greeting cards will be launched. Refreshments inspired by the Arctic landscape will be served.

There will be an artist's talk and group discussion on the subject of Geopoetics and Artists Books on Wednesday 21st November from 1800. This is a free event but numbers are limited so please contact the gallery to book your place.

Location details below. Please check shop opening hours before your visit.

Books in America

Illustration from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain (unidentified artist)

How To Say ‘I Love You’ in Greenlandic is currently on show at The Center for Book Arts, New York, in the exhibition Tell Me How You REALLY Feel: Diaristic Tendencies, curated by Alexander Campos, Executive Director, and the artist Rory Golden (until 22nd September). It has just been announced that the exhibition will then travel to Payne Gallery at Moravian College Pennsylvania, where it will be on show until the end of the year.

Doverodde has been selected for the exhibition Sense of Place in Artist Books at the Architecture and Landscape Library Gallery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, curated by Karen Kinoshita (also on show until the close of 2012). The exhibition is part of Mapping Spectral Traces which serves to mediate and facilitate inter- and trans-disciplinary international dialogue to explore the role of the visual and performing arts in addressing such relevant concerns as ecological activism, ‘deep mapping’, place-based memory work, trauma, postcolonial geographies and related topics. 

Back in the saddle

I took a break from blogging last month after the epic effort of posting daily as part of my spring residency at Doverodde Book Arts Center in Denmark. Here's a round-up of what's been brewing during June.

How To Say 'I Love You' In Greenlandic

This evening the summer exhibitions open at The New York Center for Book Arts. There's a free drinks reception at 7pm - do go along if you're in the area. 

This year offers two great shows - Maria G. Pisano, founder of Memory Press, curates Book as Witness: The Artist’s Response. The artists, who use the book form to investigate death and destruction as a result of global conflicts, prejudice, terrorism, natural disasters, and individual losses, include Booklyn Artists Alliance, Combat Papermakers, Maureen Cummins and Art Spiegelman. 

Tell Me How You REALLY Feel: Diaristic Tendencies, organised by Alexander Campos, Executive Director, and the artist Rory Golden, focuses on artwork that has been inspired by the concept or content of graphic novels, memoirs, and travel journals with a strong visual presence. How To Say 'I Love You' In Greenlandic will be featured. The definitions of Greenlandic words that can apply to both the emotions and the landscape do indeed Tell Me How You REALLY Feel. The pochoir prints depicting icebergs which illustrate the book reference the recurrent use of the iceberg as a motif for the inexpressible sublime in illustrations to nineteenth-century Arctic travel narratives. 

Both shows run at the Center from July 11, 2012  to September 22, 2012.

Miriam Macgregor in her kitchen

Anyone interested in pochoir prints and hoping to find out more can read my interview with the grande dame of pochoir, Miriam Macgregor, in the Summer Issue of Printmaking Today. Last November I spent a week in the New Forest with Miriam and the American wood engraver Abigail Rorer, writing and sketching during the day, talking long into the evening. Miriam began pochoir in her sixties after a life of wood engraving, and her excitement in the process and sense of its possibilities are an inspiration.

The Night Hunter

The compendium 1,000 Artists' Books: Exploring the Book as Art has been some time in the making: it's a lot of artists' books to round up. Edited by Sandra Salamony, with advice from those wonderful artists Peter and Donna Thomas, it is now out from Quarry Books. I am delighted to see the work of many friends included, and interested to discover some artists whose work is new to me. Roni Gross of Z'roah Press has several book works included and The Night Hunter is one of them!

Watch this space for a companion volume to The Night Hunter in which Roni Gross responds to my poem The Hunter Teaches Me to Speak, currently in production as part of the Al-Mutanabbi Street project. 


DOVERODDE 

My exhibition Limfjord Lines has now come down after a month in the Doverodde Book Arts Center. However,  DOVERODDE, the book inspired by my residency is now on sale in the Center's shop, and sales via the internet are cheering. This was my first experiment with print-on-demand provider Blurb and although it is a very different aesthetic to letterpress I am pleased with the results.  

The book has been selected for the exhibition Sense of Place in Artists' Books, curated by Karen Kinoshita, which runs from October to December 2012 at the Architecture Library, University of Minnesota. 

Images of the Doverodde Book Arts Festival, including Arne Holstborg's raucous woven hearts workshop which brought proceedings to a close, are now up on Flickr

Limfjord Lines

During April and May 2012 I was writer-in-residence at the Book Arts Center at the Limfjordscentret, located in a historic merchant’s building by the Limfjord in North Jutland, Denmark. This month-long residency culminated in the Doverodde Book Arts Festival IV and Symposium.

Limfjord Lines, an exhibition of my work about the region, will run in the Doverodde Købmandsgård Gallery from 22 May until 24 June 2012. Doverodde, a new publication containing writing from the residency, is also available.

Doverodde Book Arts Festival and Limfjord Lines