London Art Book Fair

p's & q's press are showing at the London Art Book Fair this weekend.

Preview: Friday 25th September 2 - 5pm (followed by live music and performances until late)

Fair: Friday 25th September, 5pm - late, Saturday 26th & Sunday 27th September 11am - 6pm
Admission Free

E: bookfair@whitechapelgallery.org
T: 0207 5393316

Launched earlier this year and new from p's & q's press is A Memorable Fancy; Une Vision Memorable which be featured at the London Art Book Fair.

William Blake’s dream of printing; a book of contrasts in which etchings by Christine Tacq unfold to celebrate the visionary in the everyday, and woodcuts by José San Martin (Azul Editions) juxtapose the English and French languages. The book is letterpress printed in Garamond on Somerset paper. In this edition of 54, 27 even numbered copies are bound at the Fine Book Bindery. 10 copies with 4 prints are held in solander cases and bound with a tarnished copper insert on he front cover, 17 copies are in slipcases.

José has just had his work featured at la Librarie Niçaise at 145 Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris. This is a beautiful and friendly artists' book shop, the whole of the upstairs room is lined with glass cabinets to the ceiling displaying pages.

Editioning

At the moment I am editioning Sleep Walking Through Trees to complete the remaining copies. I stopped printing about a third of the way through to finish the Blake project with José. I have a love/hate relationship with editioning, but despite all the arguments in my head about 'limited editions' I still love the small unexpected perfections and meditations that take place and inform ideas for new books when such a long sequence is repeated over and over.

Each double page takes about three hours to ink up and print, going through the press either two or three times to create the layers of colour.



Sleep Walking Through Trees has had a long and complicated evolution. Above is the Arbre mon ami image in its earliest form exhibited at Westonbirt Arboretum in Gloucestershire.

Coffee Times

Coffee Times finally returned from its world tour with the Sitting Room exhibition curated by Tom Sowden.

The tour:

Manchester Craft & Design Centre, Manchester, 26^th May – 15^th Jul 2006.

Alsager Arts Centre, Alsager, 4^th Dec 2006 – 26^th Jan 2007.

Permanent Gallery, Brighton, 1^st – 18^th Feb 2007.

Winchester Gallery, Winchester, 6^th Jul – 2^nd Aug 2007.

Artist’s Book Exhibition Area, UWE, Bristol, 21^st Aug – 21^st Sep 2007.

AKI, The Enschede Academy of Visual Arts, The Netherlands, 10^th Oct – 9^th Nov 2007.

Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge, 13^th Dec 2007 – 2^nd Jan 2008.

K Gallery, Alameda, California, USA, 7^th Mar – 27^th Apr 2008.

Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico City, Mexico, 26^th May – 7^thJul 2008

Meanwhile I have printed a 2nd edition of 25 copies

Closure exhibition

Closure was the theme for another amazing book exhibition curated by Melanie Bush and Emma Powell which opened at Artworks MK in August. This is the last collagraph printed page of Printess and the P. Now that I have been able to work out the end of the as yet barely begun story of the insomniac whose ordeal inspired the naming of p's & q's press, this should be my next publication!

BABE - Bristol Art Book Event at the Arnolfini

Also in Spring this year p's & q's press exhibited at BABE at the Arnolfini in Bristol.


BABE gave us an opportunity to show Leonie Lachlan's new books. The latest books, City Cypher: Paris and City Cypher: Sao Paulo were completed in the week running up to the fair.

Here they are drying at p's & q's studio in Thame. (Most of the letterpress equipment in the studio was bought from Geoffrey Trenamen's Snake River Press in Brighton thanks to a tip off from Ron King and Dennis Hall).

Leonie worked on the City Cypher Series directly from her Paris and Sao Paulo sketchbooks. Her 4 month research trip to Brazil in 2008, having been granted the Bartlett Travel Award, was documented in her blog Sao Paulo Sketchbook.

Leonie uses her drawings from high vantage points in cities (the Centre George Pompidou in Paris and Edificio Italia in Sao Paulo) to recreate the experience of trying decypher the architectural language. The books are relief printed on Arches from lino-cuts and are letterpress printed in Gill Sans.

Leonie is currently working on the third book in the series, City Cypher: Berlin.

Two other of Leonie Lachlan's books about cities were on show at BABE. Metroscillations (above) is an exploration of urban earthworks in a map format.

Inhale: Exhale is about the experience of cannibalising the light and space of Oscar Niemeyer's Brasilia.

Drawing in museums

p's and q's have two forthcoming books that are inspired by drawing in museums.

As Sparksartists we collected awards at the British Museum (mainly pencils) from the Campaign for Drawing for our public event for The Big Draw at Thame Museum.

The following publications have been informed by objects discovered in museums.



Recovered; A Storm of Stars is the first of three volumes about hats and emancipation in 1912. I focused on hats and also on the hat cabinet because the structure helped define the curves of hat shapes. A fete poster from 1912 featured a hat trimming competition, its typography was as eloquent as the hats on display, with every slight curve conveying a different meaning.



A few years ago I published Sample Book and Vindication, artist's books inspired by drawing samplers in the museum at Woodstock in Oxfordshire. I linked them to imagery from 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman' by Mary Wollstonecraft.