Hallowe'en Editions

Alchemy (2006) Letterpress by Roni Gross

As Hallowe'en approaches a reminder that these are the last few days to catch They Cast No Shadows: Hallowe'en Works from Zitouna Press over 25 years at The Centre for Fine Print Research, UWE, Bristol. The exhibition - which showcases printed multiples made annually for Hallowe'en by New York artist Roni Gross - runs until 31 October. 

Further details about the exhibition including my catalogue essay are available online here.

Manchester Artists Book Fair 2014

I will be showing my work at Manchester Artists Book Fair later this month, and I'm delighted to announce that I'm sharing my stand with visiting New York artist Roni Gross, who has been invited to give two printing masterclasses at Hot Bed Press in Salford (details here). 

We're looking forward to presenting some of our recent collaborative projects, including the first UK showing of Tikilluarit. The Book Fair is a great opportunity to talk to artists about their work, so do visit if you are in the area. 

Inconstant Water

I'm delighted to announce the publication of a new collaboration with the printer Roni Gross. Inconstant Water examines the art of travel across the sea, with particular reference to the carved wooden maps of Anmassalik. Inconstant Water was commissioned for Voyage Boxed, a project co-ordinated by artists Imi Maufe and Rona Rangsch.

Stories of sea journeys mesmerize readers with images of longing, discoveries, hardship and survival, of determination and being lost, of the width of the open sea, the magic of foreign destinations; they tell us how men and women face up to the elements of wind and water, how they defeat them or are defeated. But how and why do contemporary artists access the theme of sea journeys, what are their motivations and intentions, and which modes of expression do they employ?

The exhibition Voyage: sea journeys, island hopping and trans-oceanic concepts was held at Künstlerhaus Dortmund, Germany in 2013, curated by Imi Maufe and Rona Rangsch. Voyage, purposefully shown in a land-locked city, brought together artists whose works explored the theme in often subtle and less obvious ways than one would expect. The curators wanted Voyage to tour, and so they commissioned Voyage Boxed: 'a creative answer to the issues involved with touring exhibitions.' This miniature version of the exhibition is reminiscent of the ‘ditty boxes’, containers in which sailors on long sea voyages kept their precious belongings, and which Scottish artist John Cumming pays tribute to in his work.

Voyage Boxed aims to represent the original exhibition as a multiple edition in a format of just 14.8x 14.8cm. The box includes a collection of artworks by 16 of the Voyage artists and the two artist-curators, and the original exhibition catalogue. Voyage Boxed has been produced as a limited edition of 50.

Contributing artists:
 Peter Bennett (UK), Nancy Campbell (UK) with Roni Gross (USA), John Cumming (UK), David Faithfull (UK), Andrew Friend (UK), Lutz Fritsch (DE), Matthew Herring (UK), 
Gunnar Jonsson (IS), Simon Le Ruez (UK/DE) David Lilburn (IR), Imi Maufe (UK/NO), 
Rona Rangsch (DE), Ding Ren (USA), Aslak Gurholt Rønsen (NO), Ian Stephen with Christine Morrison (UK), Jeff Talman (USA), Sally Waterman (UK), 
and Philippa Wood (UK).

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.

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.

New Book - Tikilluarit

I’m excited to announce a new book from Z’roah Press in New York. Tikilluarit sees me working once again with Roni Gross and Peter Schell, the team that created The Night Hunter.

A sonnet from my Greenlandic series, originally published in Modern Poetry in Translation as ‘The Hunter Teaches Me To Speak’, has been recast by Gross and Schell in a new, experimental setting.

Tikilluarit was created for An Inventory Of Al-Mutanabbi Street. This project, ‘both a lament and a commemoration of the singular power of words’, is an international response to the explosion of a car bomb in Al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic centre of bookselling in Baghdad and the heart and soul of the literary and intellectual community, in March 2007.

There’s more information on Tikilluarit here, and I will post details of events and exhibitions in the coming months.

I also recommend browsing the online portfolio of work by Roni Gross.

The Night Hunter in New York

The launch of The Night Hunter and How to say 'I love you' in Greenlandic in the United States was a double-bill of Arctic-themed events hosted by The New York Center for Book Arts and Florisity (see pictures below).

Between the festivities I saw a solo exhibition of sculptures by Peter Schell, one half of the creative team behind The Night Hunter. The purity of these forms reminds me of layers of glacial ice, although they were begun long before our Greenlandic collaboration.

Emily Martin was also in the city celebrating her solo exhibit Theme and Variation at The Center for Book Arts. We made cookies to serve at the private view iced with her trademark stick figures from the 'Crime and Romance' series. Emily's show continues until 3 December. It would be criminal to miss it.

Theme and Variation at The New York Center for Book Arts

Emily Martin working with icing bag

Emily Martin's work also features in the exhibition The Book As Memorial: Book Artists Respond To and Remember 9/11 at the Haas Family Arts Library at Yale University. The library has also added both The Night Hunter and How to say 'I love you' in Greenlandic to its collections.

Thanks are due to the New York Room With A View establishment by the waterfront on Staten Island, which provided a place to sleep in between all these activities.

The Night Hunter:

Book Arts Lounge at The New York Center for Book Arts

7th October 2011

Roni Gross (proprietor of Z'roah Press) demonstrates how to print on the Vandercook

Participants take turns to print flashcards with words from How to say 'I love you' in Greenlandic.

On the left, bookbinder Ana Cordeiro, who made the box that houses the deluxe edition of The Night Hunter, welcomes me back to The Center for Book Arts after a three-year absence. It was good to find Natalie McGrorty (in purple) in town too.

Reception and Book Launch at Florisity

16th October 2011

The Night Hunter

Roni Gross's flower arrangements referenced polar themes

How to say 'I love you' in Greenlandic

Thanks to Sarah Nicholls, Roni Gross and Emily Martin for the photographs used in this post.

New York Book Launch Double Bill

News from New York

The Night Hunter

Roni Gross - a longtime friend and more recently collaborator - has put up some amazing images of recent work on her website. Here you can see a generous spread of the Zitouna offerings that Gross has printed biannually for Valentine's Day and Hallowe'en since 1989. To me, who only gets around to making a Christmas card every other year, this output seems phenomenal. Especially when the rest of Gross' work is taken into account. More of that here, too: a selection of poetry broadsides, and for those curious to see more images of The Night Hunter than have appeared on this blog to date, there's a slideshow of sorts, with the artist's commentary.

A New Publication - The Night Hunter

Without any doubt the most exciting project I’ve participated in over the last year has been The Night Hunter, a work now available from Z’roah Press in New York. Roni Gross, book artist and founder of Z’roah, produces limited edition artists’ books with the sculptor Peter Schell. Gross spotted my poem ‘The Night Hunter’ when it was awarded a prize at the Norman MacCaig Centenery celebrations last year. It is an honour to be added to Z’roah’s panoply of poetic works, which includes the exquisite Radiance and Repose by Geri Gomez Pearlberg.

It has been intriguing to see my work taking on a new imaginative form. Explaining the design decisions, Gross writes:

‘The structure of the book, a palm leaf, is of east asian origin, as is the form of the poem, a pantoum. The requirements of the pantoum are that the lines repeat in a specific pattern. We felt that the reader could be cued into this pattern visually, using drawn lines whose colors repeat as the language repeats. In the abstract quality of the lines is the suggestion of a remote landscape.

‘Historically in Greenland, the lack of ordinary materials like wood and metal, and even fiber for cordage, has made materials found on the beach or acquired through trade of great value. For this work, the sculptural vocabulary was chosen from primarily found material: wild harvested dogbane for cordage, driftwood for covers, scrap metal and horse bone, scavenged wood for the game board.

‘The objects, making abstract reference to the poem, allow the reader to re-experience the poem tactilely, and also participate in the telling of the story by arranging the objects on the game board.’

These elemental materials – the stone, the steel, the bone – even the driftwood and the dogsbane cord – are a perfect physical expression of the austere Arctic environment that I had tried to capture in the poem. In Greenland, driftwood washed ashore from other lands or shipwrecks was once a valuable commodity, a means of sustaining survival. What is discovered at the harbour finds a new incarnation on unfamiliar land.

Everything about Roni Gross and Peter Schell’s production improves on and enriches the original, one-dimensional poem. I am amazed by how close they have come to expressing the unspoken intentions of the work. It has been a wonderful experience to have the words taken out of my hands and see them develop and deepen in this way.



The Night Hunter
Words by Nancy Campbell
Sculpture, design and production by Roni Gross and Peter Schell
Z’roah Press, New York, 2011
Edition limited to 28 copies, signed and numbered by the artists and writer. The deluxe edition (pictured) is priced $2,500 and the standard edition (in a Cave Paper Case) $750

Christmas Dinner at Kensington

This lunchtime I was trying to maintain a sense of decorum while wearing a pink tissue paper crown, scoffing my first Christmas dinner of the season in the canteen of the RCA. Five stars for the roast potatoes, but none for the Christmas pudding - its suspiciously gelatinous sauce tasted more of lighter fluid than Courvoisier.

The dinner was offered by a group of Communication Art & Design students, who had asked me to give a talk on Book Arts. I took along a swag bag of samples as usual - I'm always interested to see which book will raise most interest for a group. In this case it was Roni Gross' beautiful Hallowe'en keepsake, with its multiple fold-out pages and scattered typography.


It was a good change to see some of the current show, too, including the uncanny work of the illustrator Zoe Taylor.