The 8th Manchester Artists' Book Fair  is once more just over the horizon.  It's a lot of work every year, as much as anything because of all the attendant anxiety - will the stands book up?  Will the exhibitors be satisfied with everything?  Will visitors come to the fair, enough to make it buzz?  I've added a new worry for this year - will anyone find the new website?  I'm working on that. 

I hope everyone who reads this will go take a look at the website, and then come to the fair in the autumn, not just because of the buzz we're hoping for, but because going to a book arts fair is a fantastic way to spend an afternoon.  I know, I'm biased, but really it is.  It's a little early to urge everyone to go - it's not till the 18th and 19th of October - but whatever, that's what I'm doing.  Put it in the diary now, and when the middle of October comes round, go see for yourself!     

Continuing...

In the coffee area, around the corner from the Holden Gallery's exhibition in the main hall, was a delightful installation the subject of which, coincidentally or deliberately, tied in with the main theme of death - bees.  The artist, Jade Alana Ashton, says Imagine yourself in a museum of the future where specimens of flora, fauna, botany, are frozen in time... All bees have died... No flowers... No pollen... No bees...  Her installation (I never quite know what constitutes an installation, but this says it is, and that's good enough for me) is a collection of fantastically delicate items in jars - as, I suppose, in a museum - many of which are definitely porcelain and some of which might be bone?  There are words stamped and prints printed and drawings drawn on to ultra thin (presumably paper) porcelain and the whole show has such fragility.  There is a book of quotations and statements concerning bees, with backgrounds, fragments of text, pieces of fabric and lace, dried flowers all sewn in. 

And that was the Death part of Monday.  Life was a walk afterwards round the Middlewood Locks area of ground, across Oldfield Road from Hot Bed Press.  It has been Acquired, so it can only be a matter of time until it's built on - a different sort of death, I suppose, but meanwhile it's buzzing, literally.  The whole area made me think of a medieval tapestry covered with flowers - the grass, dried to straw after this long hot spell of weather, sewn through with purple vetches and thistles and buddlieas, yellow ragwort, the rust-reds of dock flowers, large (ox-eye?) daisies, something dainty and white that I didn't know, masses of glorious seedheads - and all on an almost-hidden base of broken tarmac and concrete.  Tortoiseshells, meadow browns, dainty moths, bumblebees, crickets, those tiny stripes of electric blue (damselflies?), birdsong (nothing I knew).  Alive alive alive.     

On the other hand, the fact that Douglas Gordon's work didn't have much impact on me was far more interesting.  Called '30 Seconds Text', it was a panel of text in a more or less completely darkened room (walking into the pitch black entrance was an act of faith in itself, that there really was a way in!), where a single light bulb came on for 30 seconds before leaving the visitor in darkness again.  The text - apparently of a length to be read in 25-30 seconds - describes a reasonably ghoulish attempt during the French Revolution to elicit reaction from a severed head during the 30 seconds immediately after its separation from its owner.

That it meant so very little to me did make me consider - I decided that, like Nazi experiments on Jewish victims, it was all so dehumanizing that the brain couldn't make sense of it, couldn't make it fit into normal life parameters.  Unless it was that we are all desensitised these days, with violence and horror so often presented to us in one form or another.  But I think the actual heartlessness of the original experiment was the thing.

Which leaves three artists.  Sam Taylor-Wood showed a speeded-up film of a bowl of fruit deteriorating from fresh to a shapeless, fly-wreathed slump of brown goo.  It was fascinating to watch the rot set in and I really enjoyed it, but it was like watching an experiment - afterwards I found myself wondering if I would feel the same experimenting on animals (or humans) instead of fruit, just wrapped up in watching the process, not the subjects.  I'm pretty sure the answer is no, but it was uncomfortable.  I appreciate the sort of art that comes back to visit your thoughts - it doesn't matter how it's worked but, on whatever level, it has.

Having just watched Cornelia Parker on 'What do artists do all day?', and with memories of her works at a show in the Baltic a few years back, I was pre-disposed to like her pieces - 'A Feather from Freud's Pillow' and 'Avoided Object'.  The former was a projection of exactly what it says, and the latter four photos of cloudy skies taken above the Imperial War Museum on a camera formerly owned by the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, both works - but especially the latter - being given extra meaning by their provenance.  It was fascinating watching her talk on 'What do artists do all day?' - absolutely everything she does seems to be freighted with questioning, probing.  She looks into the depths of everything.  Rather humbling.  Having said that, I confess I just liked the pretty pictures and the provenance didn't make much odds - I think I might be a little too shallow, but I still appreciate the idea.             

And finally Ian Breakwell and my favourite piece - not 'Parasite and Host', a photo of the terminally ill artist with a crab over the lung that was killing him, but 'The Other Side'.  I don't usually 'do' videos, but this was haunting - four ageing couples waltzing slowly and silently in a quiet seaside location to a soundtrack of Schubert and seagulls, the camera panning from side to side, then a further film very similar but without the couples.  Apparently the back of the screen carried the 'other' film at the same time, but you only needed one side for the full effect.  It was gentle, softly sad, slow, mesmerising, enchanting, just amazing - of everything in the exhibition, it most made me think of mortality.  When the dancers weren't on screen, I waited for them, expecting them to appear at any moment; when they were there they seemed strangely insubstantial.  The music was melancholy, as so much Schubert is.  Even the location, an English seaside town with that unspoken text of sad decline.  Yes, just amazing.   

I was going to keep going - there's more! - but really, that's enough for one day.  I'll continue later.

The studio managers and staff at Hot Bed Press are still increasing the number of posters we should all be putting out there.  Here are five more, from Caroline, Sam, Sean, Sean again (on a found image) and Cathy.  Jen's owl should have been here too, but somehow it didn't survive the journey.  I'll try again, now I feel able (just about) to use the Mac (if I must). 

Sam's monster is also on A-boards outside the workshop.  That monster is our mascot!

I made the trek over to Warrington yesterday.  It makes me disappointed in myself that a trip to Warrington should loom trek-like, but it does.  Until I go, when I realise I really quite enjoy the journey - the road runs alongside the Manchester Ship Canal, and to be next to almost any waterway is nice; there are unenclosed fields for part of the way, which always give a delicious feeling of space and, with everything keen to grow grow grow at the moment, they were beautifully fuzzy-edged; there is a section of roadside that has been made into flower meadows.  I've stopped before now to appreciate them, so I was looking forward to them and they didn't disappoint - mostly yellow (not quite sure what) and also red (poppies), blue (cornflowers) and doubtless much more unnoticed as I sped past. 

But enough of the journey.  I went to see an exhibition being held in the Gallery at Bank Quay House, by a group of artists who call themselves Markmakers, which inclined me to like them before I arrived.  The introductory blurb suggested that they had been working from stories into art, with a particular emphasis on Mark Cocker's Crow Country - more reason to like.  There were many artists involved, so I should say straight away that I shan't be naming them all, but some artists and works particularly took my fancy, of course.

In spite of the attraction of crows, I was most taken by Claire Weetman's boxes, which had nothing whatsoever to do with corvids of any description.  A residency in Shanghai had been full of bustle and bemusement and incomprehensible signs in chinese characters - arrows were more helpful than much else and aided her in making her way this alien world.  The boxes each have  a lasered quotation on the lid from 'Alice in Wonderland', adrift in her own unknown land, and inside they have photos and (mostly) chaotic arrows.  They were lovely things in themselves and definitely portrayed the sense of confusion.

Elsewhere in the show, Fiona Phillips' 'A Crow Day' was a densely layered book created from fabric and paper; Jacqui Chapman had a poem on a large canvas entitled 'Winter Walled Garden, Grappenhall Heyes' - I had some totally deep and meaningful thoughts about it at the time but I didn't note them down so now I don't have them any more, but it managed to make me want to see this winter walled garden; there were some convincingly bird-like wire birds by Angela Sidwell; and Jane Copeman showed Rookery Prints - both the digitally etched wood plates and the prints taken from them.  What I failed to see or wasn't there was some kind of introduction - as in the email invitation - explaining the idea behind the show.  A very nice touch, however, was having copies of the books used as inspiration or starting point, so that visitors could look at them while having a coffee in the attached café.  All in all, definitely worth that trek.  

My print 'Chalk and Memory' was accepted for the Bath Society of Artists' 108th annual exhibition at the Victoria Art Gallery.  Which gives me a bit of a thrill.  I'd like to make it to the opening on Friday evening, but the 400 mile round trip just isn't going to fit into time available.  Oh well - the show's on till 31st August, so I should find opportunity to see it before then. 

There was a book arts open day at The Grange at Ellesmere this Saturday just gone.  And as we were (with a large side-curve from the straight route) passing, son and I visited.

We made it with less than an hour of the open day left to go, about which I am moderately gutted because it was utterly lovely.  I confess I didn't really look up at the house - it was manor-like, it was red brick, and I can see from the photo above (which at least looks familiar) that I should have given it more attention - because I was distracted by the garden (and that was before I reached the sunken garden further round) and the singers (Connie and Evie - they were excellent!) and the ambience and the peacefulness of the whole place.  Book arts aside, I could happily have drifted around, doubtless with a ridiculous dreamy look on my face, for several hours.  A sketchbook too - forget hours, I think I could have spent weeks there.

The book arts (such as we were able to see in the short amount of time we had) were scattered around the grounds, in and out of various buildings, and astoundingly good.  Christopher Rowlatt, book restorer and conservator and marbler and much more besides, was a little daunting (though I daunt easily) in his compendious knowledge, but I would have loved to make my way, page by page, through the book he was working on - a volume of David Hume's 'History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688', complete with engravings scattered throughout and printed (I had to check this from the associated blog) on thick, ivory James Whatman wove, watermarked 1794.  I think it might be highly instructive to lurk, unnoticed, while he works for a month or two.  Or six.  Or eighteen.

We couldn't resist a marbling demonstration (I would love to attend a course here) and son came away with his own bespoke sheet - I think I should ensure that it's turned into something useful for him (otherwise it's likely to be turned into something useful for me...). 

Elizabeth Willow, erstwhile Hot Bed Press resident book artist and now tutor there in letterpress, was (where else?) in the letterpress room, where she showed us their vandercook (no more detail than that from me, I'm afraid - I know nothing) and demonstrated it printing.  Oh what a lovely toy.  She must find the HBP adana presses (tiny, all power from your own elbow) so puny by comparison.  She showed us the foil blocker too, so now I have a flyer (I expect it has a less throwaway name) in black and red and a beautiful (and useful) foil-blocked bookmark.

There was a casting room too.  At this point my brain stopped working completely - I would love to know more, but I looked at the machinery and thought how very very very complicated it was and never really got past that point.  It was 5 to closing time by now so the machine was being put to bed, but I don't think I would have understood any more with a demonstration.  Maybe it's possible I could get my head a little more round the whole operation, but I'm far from convinced.  It delights me, though, that the casting of letterpress is happening.

And that was it.  I've already said I didn't look at the house or spend enough time in the garden; neither did I engage with calligraphy or illustration, each of which had a stand.  There were almost certainly other things we missed too.  Same time next year? 

Meanwhile, I'm taking a letterpress course with Elizabeth soon - should be good.