Saturday 22 April 2023
Kentish Town, London, UK
Explore the diverse and beautiful world of artists who use the handmade book creatively. Buy unique or limited edition works from the artists who make them
Visitor information
Venue: Kentish Town Congregational Church Halls, Kelly St, London NW1 8PH
Time: doors open at 11.00 and close at 15.00
Entry charge: free entry for all visitors
Accessibility: the venue has wheelchair access
Buying: artists will have their books for sale. Some will take electronic payments but others prefer cash. Please bring both forms of currency!
Exhibiting artists: Batool Showghi – Bookband – Caroline Penn – Chris Ruston – Christine McCauley – Christine Nicholls (Inkpot & pen) – City Lit – Frances Day – Isobel Lewis (Kelpie Press) – Jane Cradock-Watson – Joan Higgins – Mandy Brannan – Ruth Martin – Sophie Artemis – Sumi Perera – Tessa Sinclair – and more to come…
Batool Showghi
Batool Showghi’s multidisciplinary approach to the artists’ book and her mixed media work involve photography, illustration, painting and textiles. All of which are employed to explore themes of cultural heritage, memory, identity and loss in very personal ways. Her work as an artist is concerned with the experience of women and the way in which this experience relates to cultural and religious boundaries as well as reflecting on the theme of turbulence, immigration, disintegration of the family and the experience of displacement.
Batool uses family birth certificates, passports, old photographs, and documents to create her artist’s books. In recent projects and artist’s books Batool uses textile pieces on canvas and paper and the use of a sewing machine as a drawing tool to create her narratives and imagery.
@batoolshowghi on Instagram
Bookband
The Book Band is a collaborative group of book artists formed in 2021 all of whom are also long term members of Stroud Artists Books.
We meet regularly online and in person, and work on individual projects, collaborative work and also shared themes. The purpose of the group is to promote our work and book arts more widely, to learn from each other and to improve and develop our individual creative practice.
As individual artists our work is very varied in style. Individual concepts are wide-ranging and include philosophical, scientific, geographical, historical and mythical ideas. We have produced some collaborative works where we blend these approaches by focusing on structure, colour or other cohesive concept.
We work in a range of media and materials, including traditional book binding materials and techniques as well as wood, found items, print and poetry and more experimental forms. The nature of some of our work can sometimes challenge one’s notion of what is a book.
We recently exhibited at the annual Artists Book Fair at the Fruitmarket in Edinburgh, and have previously shown our work at Turn the Page, The Baltic, BABE, Printed Bound and the Clevedon Literary Festival.
Contact name: Frances Day
Contact email: francesday42@gmail.com
Website https://thebookband.co.uk
Instagram: @bookbandart
Caroline Penn
Working with photographs, text and drawing Caroline creates books and short films. These works explore the domestic space, memory, intimacy and loss.
Recent books have looked at our relationship with chairs, inherited china and a vacuum cleaner.
Books are held in private and public collections including the British Library, Tate Britain, the V&A National Art Library and the Beaux-Arts de Paris.
@penn.caroline
caroline@carolinepenn.com
Chris Ruston
Chris Ruston creates art using various book structures. Sensual and intimate responses connect observations of the everyday world to historical objects. Museum collections are a source of inspiration, opening conversations between the past and present. Time is a theme which runs through the work.
Recent work explores our relationship to writing and the word. Expanding the boundaries of text to create drawings which sit between these two disciplines.
Website: chrisruston.com
Instagram: @artistchrisruston
Christine McCauley
Christine McCauley is a London-based artist and book artist who works at the London Centre for Book Arts. The work produced is small edition, hand bound books and prints primarily printed letterpress using handset type, multi block linocut, woodcut, and polymer plate. Some work is printed using risograph. Particular interests are the effect the past has on the present, travels in Southeast Asia and women’s history.
Christine Nicholls (Inkpot & Pen)
Inksmith Christine Nicholls, who works under the name Inkpot & Pen, uses illustration, hand lettering and printmaking in her work. Inspired by the beauty of nature and the world around us, particularly the everyday things we see… that we don’t see. Her collection of hand drawn maps focuses on reacquainting the viewer’s attention to the small architectural details which through familiarity, become invisible.
Christine is the author of The Diary of an Artist in Lockdown, a collection of drawing every day for five months starting at the beginning of lockdown 2020.
Website: www.inkpotandpen.com
Instagram & Twitter: @inkpotandpen
City Lit
City Lit bookbinding provides a comprehensive range of traditional and contemporary taught and workshop-based courses at all levels from beginner to advanced. Students studying on our courses can develop skills in traditional bookbinding, gold tooling, paper marbling, historic and experimental book structures and contemporary fine binding. Students interested in book arts can explore both classic and innovative techniques and structures to produce unique books and editions.
Website: https://www.citylit.ac.uk/courses/art-and-design/contemporary-crafts/bookbinding
Frances Day
I am a book artist with a background in textile art, but my professional life has been in science and computing. I bring all these aspects together into my book art. I am passionate about communicating the beauty and excitement of science through art, and this is what drives my work. I make books that are often sculptural and usually produced digitally
I am a member of the Gloucestershire Print Co-operative which also informs my work. I am also a member of The Bookband and of Stroud Artists Books, and have exhibited work with those groups as well as in my own right. Recent exhibitions have included the annual Artists Book Fair at the Fruitmarket in Edinburgh, CityLit in London, BABE, Printed Bound and the Clevedon Literary Festival.
Contact email: francesday42@gmail.com
Website: https://coolandfroody.co.uk
Instagram: @froodyartbooks
Isobel Lewis (Kelpie Press)
Isobel Lewis makes one of a kind and limited edition artist books often with an emphasis on typography and layout. The books are produced using letterpress, printmaking and mixed media and reflect a love of pattern and colour. Isobel’s work is included in the Bodleian Library, the National Library for Scotland and various other private collections. Isobel was artist in residence at Maine Media workshops in the USA in 2017.
Jane Cradock-Watson
Jane is a book artist, illustrator and printmaker. She is interested in the relationship between nature, landscape and the human condition, as well as the haptic nature of books and printmaking.
Janes books explore the development of narratives through the handling qualities of books, experimenting with the physical form of the book and the surface qualities of different papers.
Common themes in Jane’s work, other than the natural world include a sense of place, memory and the visual culture of the domestic.
Her books are held in private and public collections including the V&A National Library, Tate Britain and the Yale Collection of British Art.
Instagram: janec_w
Twitter @JaneC_W
E mail: jcradock_watson@me.com
Joan Higgins
Joan is a Book Artist and Printmaker, living in London. She completed the two year City Lit Fine Art course in 2016 and graduated from the University of the Arts London in 2019, with an MA in Visual Arts (Book Art).
She is a Social Scientist by background and her art reflects an interest in families, communities and working lives. She explores the ways in which the land, particularly in Yorkshire and in Ireland, has shaped industry, created inequalities and influenced language. She works with found objects, tools and artefacts to explore ‘other lives’. She uses print, photographs and collage to remake images and create new stories. Her books are hand-made – folded, sewn, stitched, glued – crafted in small editions.
Website: www.joanhiggins.net
Instagram: jmh.622
Mandy Brannan
My book arts’ practice is focused on creating a visual language that explores my personal experiences influenced by wandering around and observing architectural structures and patterns. I also design and create handmade papers, which are often included in my book arts practice alongside manipulated photography, printmaking and digitally manipulated imagery.
#mandybrannan
Ruth Martin
Ruth Martin creates limited edition hand printed artist books printed with hand cut rubber stamps and a sense of fun.
Her books lend wit to workaday items such as matchboxes, string and toothpaste tubes, drawing on the bold claims and designs of their packaging.
Ruth has also created books that take a playful look at the art world with titles such as ‘In the Artists’ Aquarium’, a fold out selection of fine art fishes, ‘Drawing Pins that really draw’, a concertina of amalgamated artists and pins, and ‘Twentysix Vaseline Vacations’, an appropriation of American artist Ed Ruscha’s seminal artist book, ‘Twentysix Gasoline Stations’
All are printed in the hope to raise a smile.
Website: www.nothingbuttheruth.co.uk
Instagram: @nothingbuttheruth_
Sophie Artemis
Maker of beguiling tunnel books and books with Pop-up, moving pages about Love and Nature. Vivid, small editions that journey into the book, hiding and revealing as the work is handled, viewed and explored. Artist in residence at a women’s prison. Work in the V&A Art library and Tate Library collections and many university collections.
www.sophieartemis.com
@sophie.artemis
Sumi Perera
Sumi Perera is a post-disciplinary artist who makes artistbooks that often oscillate between the codex and concertina format by withdrawal of a detachable spine, which allows the book to undress itself. Often there are multiple narratives that unfold as the format changes. She draws upon her background working in her native country Sri Lanka and her adoptive country UK, as a doctor, scientist and artist (MA Bookarts, Camberwell College UAL, 2003-2004). She has done many international teaching & artist residencies in Beijing & Yinchuan in China; Venice, Italy; Marcilhac France; and London which feeds into her practice.
She makes hand-held small books that extend to large installations (up to 50 metres). Her artistbooks have been awarded many international prizes : Prix de Print USA (2015); a few awards at the Society of Bookbinders Conference & Competition (2009 & 2017); 1st Prize
Shelter USA 92007); Birgit Skiold Artistbook Award ICA London (2005); Gold Medal 1st Artistbook Competition Seoul, S Korea etc.
Her works are held in many private & public collections : Tate Britain Special Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum, Yale Centre for British Art, Ashmolean, British Museum, Royal Collection, Bibliotheca Alexandria Egypt, Southern Cross University Artistbook Award, Manly Library Artistbook Award Australia etc..
https://www.saatchiart.com/sumiperera
https://www.instagram.com/sumi_perera/
https://www.facebook.com/sumi.perera.71
https://twitter.com/PereraSumi
2B Or Not 2B [To Be Or Not To Be] - Artistbook of a Sound Installation. Sumi Perera
ROOTS - Not Black & White, but 50 Shades of Grey & Brown [Artist Book-opened]. Sumi Perera
SECESSSION Inside Out - Outside In [IO-OI] Composite. Sumi PereraTessa Sinclair
Tessa makes photobooks using her own photographic images and ‘found’ images as a way to communicate experiences, emotions and concepts which are sometimes best expressed through image, or perhaps can only be expressed through image. Studying for a MA Photography opened her eyes to the possibilities of what images can convey. The book form with its natural narrative structure became a genre that suited her work. She is continuing to explore the interaction between text and images.
She has published 2 photobooks and also prints and makes her own handbound books. Tessa’s first book ‘Here is ‘All I want to Be’, is an elegiac collection of landscapes taken on the coast of Suffolk with a poetic thread running through them. It is an ode to the tranquility found when immersed in nature and a story of emotion and a coming to terms with life. The second is ‘A Restless Land’, a French fold book, printed on vibrant mohawk eggshell paper stock in an edition of 75 (signed and numbered). This was made during the first lock down and the blue tones and spot lit images convey the shadow of fear that hovered over us at that time and the dislocation of time that was experienced.
Her handmade books include a multi gatefold, Japanese side stitched book of images made on the magical island of Uist in the Outer Hebrides and the first 3 volumes of a 3-section book documenting the emergence of plants in her garden, ‘Flora Domestica’.
artist information
Hiring a table: all available spaces have been booked
Setup and takedown: the venue will be open for participating artists an hour before doors open and an hour after doors close
Organiser: the event is organised by the London & South region of the Society of Bookbinders
Contact: sobbookartsday@gmail.com
Artist books group 