The Blue Notebook, Volume 14, Number 1, Autumn-Winter 2019 / Edited by Sarah Bodman

Identifier:REF.SE.2378.21

Dimensions:8.125 x 11.75 in

Publication dates:2019

Description:Articles in this issue: Ella Morrison’s article Hand to page: touch, performance, and the artist’s book presents a new phenomenological method of analysing the inherent complexities of the artist’s book. Using the work of Czech-born Australian artist Petr Herel (1943-) as case study, it argues the necessity of embracing the experience of the encounter. To do so, it proposes a new interdisciplinary methodology that combines tactile interpretation and the use of first-person with reference to performance theory, Surrealism and philosophy to analyse the book as art object. Applying this methodology to the analysis of Herel’s book I, I am a Blind Man: Three Poems (1999) clearly demonstrates the possibility for an interpretation of the artist’s book that is necessarily scholarly, subjective and experiential. Rather than limiting analysis, examining the experience of the encounter generates room for critical engagement with the previously ineffable, affective qualities of the artist’s book. By proposing a contemporary and experimental approach to the analysis of the artist’s book that combines touch and use of the first-person, this methodology has larger implications for other tactile and experiential objects that sit uncomfortably within the canon.

Altered Images: An interview with David Ferry, on the occasion of the exhibition David Ferry: The Invader’s Guide to the Museum (and other places) at the Grosvenor Museum, Chester, UK, March – June 2019. Guest curator Stephen Clarke (Lecturer in Critical and Contextual Studies at the University of Chester) interviews the artist about his work and influences, from his early childhood in Blackpool, UK, to his later, long-term interests in British farce, collage and printmaking.

Documenting Craft: A Discussion of Recordness in Book Art by Robert Riter, explores how works of book art can operate as documentary objects. Books that take as their subject the processes of their creation can function as book art records. These works can be used to make more visible the elements that make up book practices. They can also be collected as records that preserve the history of the book arts. A discussion of recordness in book art is provided through an examination of three works that document hand papermaking, letterpress printing, and bookbinding.

A spit roasted chicken, Metro tickets, the Plan of the Cemetery at Bagneux, and a typewritten text feature in the diary entries Daniel Lehan made during a recent trip to Paris. These entries form part of – DAYPAGES – a collaged diary he has kept daily since 23 February 2015. Pages not featured in his visual essay, record the lack of electricity in the flat where he stayed, a baker who left Afghanistan when his father, a Communist, threatened by ISIS, fled to live in Birmingham, and Lehan’s futile search for the gravestone of the artist Henri Rousseau.

Celebrating the 10th birthday of the imprint The Book Tree Press, Lucy Roscoe reflects back on 10 years of practice. What began as a postgraduate research project, grew into an artist’s imprint, publishing sculptural books which explore how the book form can be used to tell stories, and questioning how these creations might be published. Lucy reflects on the relationship between making and her teaching practice, whilst considering what the future might hold.

Artists’ pages by: Jane Cradock-Watson, Leonard McDermid, Sylvia Waltering and Maria White.

Cover, badge and sticker design: Chrystal Cherniwchan.