As did many a Hot Bed Press member this weekend, I visited the Manchester Contemporary exhibition - a showcase of contemporary art galleries, some of them even from Manchester and the north (sorry).

HBP had a stand with a range of print and book artists, but I more or less knew most of that - I was there to see the rest of the show.  Some of it I really liked, felt it had artistic merit (hah!  How would I know?  What I mean is I liked it, for whatever reason) or intellectual underpinnings or deep seated beliefs/arguments/outrage or whatever.  And some of it took me back to a well established state of disbelief.  It's very hard, sometimes, not to think that parts of the art world really are cynically pulling a fast one.  You can only conclude that Duchamp's belief that art is art because an artist did it has become a ready excuse for an appreciable amount of art which, if not done by an artist, really wouldn't be considered art at all.

Nevertheless, there were numbers of pieces I would happily have gone home with (and that I might borrow from, sideways - for the excusability of this please google "Steal like an artist") but I didn't write names down.  Well of course not, too easy.  The only one of those artists I remembered well enough to look up  was Abigail Reynolds.  Marbling and cooling towers (and possibly maps?).  She has started keeping (on her website) a list of books she feels have been important to her - I am already aware that I currently have no list of favourite books in the 'I like' section of my website - and as an avid re-reader myself I approved of the number of times her reading matter had next to it the word 'again'.

I think I shied away from a list for myself, for the same reason I was picky about listing the music I liked.  Quite a lot of it is, if not dross (give me some credit), literary polyfilla.  Comfort reading.  Lazy.  That's fair enough - I read to amuse myself, not to 'grow' - but there's no reason to inflict my choices on anyone else. 

Time to encourage everyone to visit the Manchester Artists' Book Fair this year.  It should be good - I know, that because I'm helping to organise it, I have to say that, but that doesn't mean it isn't true.  We're in the process of putting all the exhibitors on the website at Hot Bed Press (it's been a learning curve this year, and doesn't everything take sooooo much longer than you think - I've already decided that next year will be a lot better) so watch that space.  Hopefully it'll all happen soon.

Of course, I'm going to encourage everyone to buy, because that's why the exhibitors are there and I want book arts fairs to go on happening.  I've yet to come away from a fair without a large hole where my money used to be, but in return for that I have countless delightful things, a ton of inspiration and very few regrets.  As in most arty fields, I'm always bowled over by other people's incredible imaginations and attention to detail and patience and skill and and and.  It's too much to help with the fair and have a table as well, alas, so it'll all be money out, and no money in.  Perhaps when I go to Bristol in the spring I could make that happen the other way round?  What, and not come away with anything new?  Unlikely!

We've also (another plug) organised a morning of talks and discussion to run alongside the fair (excuse tacky image).

Sarah Bodman, Angie Butler, Nancy Campbell, Susan Kruse and Michelle Rowley are book artists with their work in collections all over the place and whose practices include, in very different ways, a lot of collaborative work.  Each of them will give a talk about their own collaboration projects and will then discuss the issue together and engage with the audience.  They all produce fantastic stuff - check them out - and it should be a very good morning.  Get in touch with Hot Bed Press and book yourself a ticket.  You won't regret it.

Odd, I think, how the mind works.  I was in Manchester's Royal Exchange today where there turned out to be an exhibition of past posters.  I went up to the mezzanine (lovely word, mezzanine) to see it and although there were a few very good examples, over all I felt disappointed and slightly flat.  It took very little time to realise that, when it comes to Royal Exchange productions - and other theatres' too, but especially Royal Exchange - music is one of the things that has lifted a number of them into the realm of memorable, making me want to go back to see them (sometimes only to hear the music again).  Cymbeline, with Art Malik, was one - though I do remember that one for Art Malik too.  Oh yes.  And one of their productions of Twelfth Night, possibly the most recent, had memorable music.  In fact for quite a while music was just wonderful in any number of their Shakespeare plays.

There must be plenty of others that I've now forgotten, alas - I've often thought they should video perfomances, and I suspect music might well be why I think that would be a good idea.  The play has to be well performed in the first place, obviously - music is not enough on its own - and the music has to be good too, but more than that it has to be (I think this would be the right word) visceral.  It has almost to enter from your feet up, something much deeper than how it sounds to the ear.

And then I went and riffled through the recent classical music releases in Forsyths, and realised even more quickly, and with no sense of surprise, just how many I would be tempted to buy for the artwork instead of the music.  Packaging is embarrassingly important to me.

So what's that all about?  I look at the art and want the music; I look at the music and want the art.  

I've hardly moved into this new studio of mine - I certainly haven't finished moving in, even though it's been nearly a month - and suddenly it's an open studios evening.  I was going to be damp squibbish and say I'd leave it until next time (or the next, or the one after that...) but hey, I can at least make use of the place for some actual work at last.  And if I don't like the experience, I don't have to do it again.  I'm in room 214.  

Hooray, the urban lapwings are back.  Well, I say back, but maybe I just don't notice them in summer, and I say urban, but perhaps lapwings always spend winter where it's warmer - why not?

Anyway,  there they were, yesterday, tumbling in their haphazard fashion above the town.  I remember - years ago now - looking up and seeing crowds of birds overhead that weren't the usual pigeon, seagull or starling, wings oddly, well, odd.  I always find 'spoonlike' springs to mind though it's hardly accurate, but due to shape and colour the wings sort of bulge at the end.  I didn't twig what they were then, but later I did when I saw dozens of them roosting on the roof of what was then Focus - like an electric blanket for them, I suppose.

They're a breath of the wild.  It's not only that they feel in the wrong place just by being there, but that they fly wild - not for them the shoal-like behaviour of starlings and especially pigeons, and even the seagulls get a regular urge to fly in goose-like, swan-like, duck-like 'V's.  Instead it's rather like watching a group of exuberant children, together in the loosest sense but all doing their own thing.  Any day of the week, at a supermarket near you, some child will be in a little world of their own, acting out a private story while their attached adult gets on with the shopping.  They twirl, jump, skip, they peer furtively round corners at invisible foes, they carry out their own many-sided conversations, they haven't a thought for the rest of the world - though they still move on when the shopper moves on.  Very like a lapwing.

My own personal flock of  (winter?) urban lapwings.  They make my day every single time I see them.         

I was away for the opening, but popped in today to see the latest neo:artists' offering - their national print prize exhibition.  An amazing range of work, not nearly all etchings, not nearly all screenprints - either of which can happen.  Instead, plenty of variety and surely something for everyone.  I've only had a brief look so far (when do I ever do otherwise?) and like all sorts (and find remarkably few where I wonder why.  Just why).  Perhaps a bit heavy on photographic imagery?  Perhaps not, maybe they were just quite closely grouped.  As ever, website images can make some works look better than in reality and others look worse, but here are a few of my favourites - no weightings as to more or less favourite, just a range:

Susie Liddle's 'Yesteryear IV' (cyanotype).  A perfect bum, no doubt, but it's the crackle effect I like.

Dan Booth's 'A dayglow autumn in Owlers Wood (screenprint).  It manages to be photographic yet not.

Ross Loveday's 'Washing of the Water' (drypoint and carborundum).  Very atmospheric.

Jennifer Fenner's 'Rose and petals' (Screenprint again).  Too pretty for some people?  I still liked it.

Anita Henderson's 'Looking Down' (gum arabic transfer).  Again, photographic but transformed into something more.

Well of course the studio looks like I've just moved in and haven't finished unpacking yet.  That's because ... I've just moved in and haven't finished unpacking yet.  What I could really do with now is no garden needing de-jungling, no kids just going back to uni, no chaotic house with mountain ranges of ironing, no immediate commitments of any kind.  Then I could just move in for a week, sort everything out.  But I'll get there - it'll just be in dribs and drabs, and take a little longer.

It shrank for a while - I remembered it larger.  But in fact it fits as much as I thought and just looked smaller.  Odd, but better than the other way round.  Looking forward to using it.