The p's & q's press

Bookfair

2012-01-29T10:39:00.000-08:00

p's & q's invite you to see artists' books surrounding a historic printing press at The Science Museum for the Watercolour and Works on Paper Fair next week.

For a last minute preview invitation or free entry ticket please email christine.tacq@talk21.com

Hatbox

2012-01-28T10:48:00.000-08:00

These books (see also March 2011), created for now as 'one of a kind', just keep evolving. The larger version has extra folding. The series is inspired by the way objects in a museum tell a different story each time they are rearranged.

Poetry

2012-01-27T10:44:00.000-08:00

These pages will start my next book. The plan is to end it with the poem by Emily Dickinson, which starts "Hope is the thing with feathers." (It was also the answer to my entry for the Thame Arts and Literature postcard trail...see September 2011)

2011-11-24T06:13:00.000-08:00

City Cypher: Vienna, the fourth title in Leonie's award-winning series, is to be launched in her debut London solo show which opens Thursday 1st December.

Leonie will also be showing new prints from her ongoing 'Playing with Matches' project. The exhibition is on until 8th December at Beach London on Cheshire Street (just off Brick Lane).

See the NO WAY press release for the show here

New Books

2011-11-23T06:08:00.000-08:00

UK Fine Press Book Fair 2011 with new books:

'Hatbox: A Storm of Stars' and 'City Cypher: Vienna' were shown alongside colour printed pages from Christine's new book to be published in July 2012.

The Oxford Fine Press Book Fair - this weekend, 5th & 6th November

2011-11-03T02:21:00.000-07:00

This was the p's & q's in 2009. If you have never been to the Oxford Fine Press Book Fair before, it's just the most unmissable opportunity to turn pages. If you have, come and find us again in the same place as last year to see new and exciting books.

Exhibitions and The Big Draw

2011-09-19T14:55:00.001-07:00

The above print will be displayed in a shop in Thame during Thame Arts and Literature Festival. It is part of a poetry postcard trail, where you have to guess which two lines of poetry it refers to.

Another festival fringe event is this year's Big Draw held at Thame Town Cricket Club on Sunday October 16th from 11am - 3pm. The Drawing and Concrete Poetry Olympics includes two exhibitions and the following events:

11am - 12noon 'Catching movement' figure drawing (after Muybridge)

11am - 3pm 'Window drawings'

1pm - 3pm 'Pencil bowling, simple print and animated drawing fun for everyone' (after Bob Cobbing

Join us for tea at 3.30pm at Thame Town Cricket Club where the winner of the poetry postcard trail will be announced.

Thame Town Cricket Club, Church Meadow, off Church Road, Thame OX9 3AJ

London Art Book Fair 2011

2011-09-19T14:46:00.000-07:00

Christine will be showing with Reed Contemporary Books at this year's London Art Book Fair at the Whitechapel Gallery.

Friday 23rd until Sunday 25th September, 11am - 6pm.

Leonie's New Drawings in NOT (an exhibition)

2011-06-14T04:28:00.000-07:00

Leonie is showing her books and a couple of new large drawings at NOT (an exhibition), the launch the of independent visual arts and music agency NO WAY at Dalston's Print House Gallery until the end of June.

The works are part of Leonie's latest project, tentatively titled 'Envisageable Cities', and are large-scale pencil drawings conjured from the artist's imagination. They are inspired by Leonie's recent trip to the construction sites of Qatar and by literature on labyrinths.

The exhibition is open now and it is well worth seeing the drawings up close as they are so intricately detailed and are easily accessed in the mosaic covered Reeves building in a quiet back street right next to Dalston Junction.

Exhibition open 8th - 30th June,

Monday to Friday until 6pm or at evenings/weekends by appointment (contact leonie.lachlan@gmail.com)

The Print House Gallery
18 Ashwin Street
London E8 3DL

Christine's Desk

2011-06-10T04:12:00.000-07:00

This is where I work when I am not printing. Right now the board is covered with tiny pressure print experiments to work out, for my new book, how printing might have been discovered in one room over one night, from necessity, rather than across the world in over a thousand years.

Some essential starting points were a cardboard box, research into images in early books and experiments with simple printing. These are though, sometimes a mad excuse to defer making the final printed page.

I was encouraged by this printing plate above, created with great intensity by a small group of children. They recently made their first collagraphs with me, inspired by illuminated manuscript images from the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. I am trying a new approach; making pressure print collages from found materials before turing them into collagraphs.

The yellow desk in the top image is MKDC circa 1970. The wallpaper probably dates from then!

2011-03-27T17:46:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos Patrick Roe sent of the very last copies of Sleep Walking ready for collection at The Fine Book Bindery tomorrow. Meanwhile a copy of the book is with Reed Contemporary Books who are showing a selection of Artists' and Fine Press Books from the UK, USA and Germany at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh on 29 March.

International Women's Day book event

2011-03-27T14:45:00.000-07:00

Here are my books in one of the very cleverly designed bookcases, which include a display cabinet, in Cardiff’s very new Central Library.

This typographic book by Philippa Wood of The Caseroom Press was enjoyed on display on the top floor of the library, accompanied by a lunchtime concert rising up from below (more singing filled the air outside later at the start of the rugby Wales v Ireland match).

In the afternoon there were more free cultural exchanges in the form of presentations and workshops. This is Lin Charlston (http://www.faction.org.uk/showing us how to make star tunnel books. Thanks everyone for a brilliant day in Wales!

2011-03-10T04:28:00.000-08:00

“Newspaper ‘women’s pages’ from 1912 are recovered from a café cellar, and a local museum’s poster advertises a ‘hat trimming competition’ in 1912...Small book works bring together events in the lives of twelve women, around 1912. Three women are fictional. Dreams of the future are expressed through access to printing and in their choice of hat trimmings.”

Vol.1 From Revolution to Retail, Loveday, Natalia, Lolly, Emmeline

Vol.2 From Reason to Revenge, Dominica,Christabel, Annie, Sylvia

Vol.3 From Reality to Reinvention, The Maid, Vera, Clare, Marina

Recovered: A Storm of Stars:

This is a piano-hinged book, bound with wooden ‘hat pins’, these are ‘one of a kind’ books to allow for research and ideas to develop.

Hatbox: A Storm of Stars:

A box of poplar wood holds three concertina books. When threaded each book becomes star-shaped with text on one side and hats on the other.

This Saturday the 12th March there will be A Day of Book Arts at Cardiff Central Library which is hosting an exhibition of books by women artists to celebrate international Women’s Day. You are welcome to book in for any of the following events. The exhibition continues to the end of the month.

10:00 – 10:45 Sarah Edmonds - presentation

11:00 –11:30 Melaneia Warwick - talk on sketchbooks

11:45 – 12:30 Christine Tacq - talk & demonstration

1:15 – 2:00 Aida Garton - talk

2:10 – 2:30 Dorcas Frazer - demonstration

2:30 – 3:30 Lin Charlston - star tunnel book-making workshop with discussion

3:30 – 4:30 Heather Engel - making books from recycled materials

Sue Paton - mini books workshop

Leonie's residency

2011-01-23T11:40:00.000-08:00

Leonie was awarded the second prize in The Abbott & Holder Drawing Award and her work will be shown at the Works on Paper Fair from 3 - 6 February 2011 at the Science Museum in London. She was also selected to be the artist in residence at the fair. p's & q's are not showing this year but Leonie will be there with her books.

Happy New Year 2011

2011-01-23T10:15:00.000-08:00

This is to wish everyone a Happy New Year! (I was told that New Year cards are OK as long as they arrive before the end of January.) It's a chine collé print made with bits of recycled Christmas cracker hats and stamp-printed tissue, overprinted with a drypoint printed from cut-out plastic onto which I scratched my version of one of Natalia Goncherova's hat designs for the Ballets Russes. I have now seen the V&A exhibition for a second time just before it closed. The hat is in quilted silver paper and is part of a costume for a sea princess. Why are there paper crowns in Christmas crackers? Are they to do with the Three Kings or more likely are they a hangover from the Roman festival where masters and servants swapped places and the 'lord of misrule' held wild court until the 25 December? I have become very interested in the interpretation of hats, as will be seen at the central library in Cardiff this March in an exhibition of books by artists for the whole of March celebrating International Women's Day (8th March). I am showing versions of the new books Hatbox and Recovered. There will be special events on Saturday 12 May and you will be able to handle the new books.

Book This Space

2010-11-20T10:05:00.000-08:00

This is 'Home Details by Christine Tacq' now showing, with other altered books, until the end of February 2011 in the 'Book This Space' exhibition at Buckinghamshire County Museum, Aylesbury. I chose the biggest discarded book on offer so as to start to make a model of the room I need to draw for my next book. Then, although I knew they would not be seen, I couldn't resist overprinting and changing the other rooms in the book originally called 'Home Details'. I was also inspired by the Giacometti exhibition at the Pompidou Centre a year or two ago and a couple of versions of 'The Palace at 4 a.m.' I love the title and the story behind it ..."We constructed a fantastical palace in the night - a very fragile palace of matches."

Altered Books

2010-10-28T05:18:00.000-07:00

The Big Draw in October (www.campaignfordrawing.org) just gets better and better. This year, to coincide with the Sparksartist-curated 'Book This Space' exhibition at Buckinghamshire County Museum, we were there drawing 'books in pyramid, tower and flying formations'.

Also, altered books and banners made with local schools are shown here at Oxfam's wonderful bookshop in Thame. The themes were 'A Day in the Life' and 'The Importance of Water', celebrating Oxfam's work in the world and looking at sketchbooks and diaries. Drawing in altered books (damaged books provided by Oxfam, Scrapstore and Lord Williams's School) revealed hidden texts. "House full of books... Inky fingers and all... School each night... Music... Should be a voluptuous treat... Like a deep hot bath..." Lucy. Drawings made with scissors and found materials, then printed as banners, included a version of the quote "A great library contains the diary of the human race", George Dawson 1866.

City Cypher: Berlin

2010-09-26T05:50:00.000-07:00

At the London Art Book Fair at The Whitechapel Gallery this year Leonie launched the third in her series of architectural city guides, City Cypher: Berlin.

Sonnet XLIII, second edition

2010-09-11T07:08:00.001-07:00

This second edition of Sonnet XLIII with a dos a dos binding was inspired by the e-motion exhibition which it was intended for. It will be shown for the first time at the Whitechapel fair. Above is the book being printed.

London Art Book Fair 2010

2010-09-11T07:04:00.001-07:00

p's & q's press hope you can join us at the preview for the London Art Book Fair, don't forget to RSVP!

Art Review magazine

2010-09-11T06:59:00.000-07:00

October's issue of Art Review magazine includes details of Leonie Lachlan's City Cypher books. The third in the award winning series will be shown for the first time at the London Art Book Fair at the Whitechapel Gallery. Images of the new book will follow shortly.

Illuminated printing

2010-09-11T06:26:00.001-07:00

Inspired by the colours created by acid, I have printed the second of the three Blake plates in an edition of 25 colour prints which I am calling 'Illuminated Printing' as each one differs slightly.

Heard on the Green

2010-07-20T06:07:00.000-07:00

This is the book I am making with Oliver Clark and Incline Press. I spent two days at Greenside School in Shepherds Bush, which was designed by Erno Goldfinger. One day was spent with some of the children so that I could see the school through their eyes (they each made a drypoint print for the book) and the other day was spent drawing. The book, created to raise money for the school, is available at Collinge & Clark bookshop.

Thame Arts and Literature Festival

2010-06-24T12:52:00.000-07:00

Sparksartists were invited to exhibit in the Town Hall where part of Thame's inaugural Arts and Literature Festival is taking place. Here is the banner we printed at p's & q's press for the event.

Experimental etching

2010-05-11T05:53:00.000-07:00

I am experimenting with William Blake's method of creating plates for 'illuminated printing'. No-one really knows what this was, but I have tried the technique I was shown at the Tate Gallery on three plates and finally it works. This is a newly etched plate. I love the colours on copper freshly out of the acid.

Sonnet XLIII

2010-04-11T05:37:00.000-07:00

I have worked out how best to edition Sonnet XLIII. The idea for it was first formed in response to looking at the Tudor painted ceiling in Thame's new museum and drawing it as part of The Big Draw in October last year.

Shakespeare's words when most I wink then do mine eyes best see describe an aspect of drawing while the intricate painted pattern on the ceiling is like a visual equivalent of the language of the sonnet.

Paper Casts and Chapel Row Exhibition

2010-03-04T16:17:00.000-08:00

All day today I have been making the very last paper cast insert for Sleep Walking Through Trees (boxed) using this mould. If you zoom out through the studio door you might find the weeping ash that inspired the mould. In a week or two the whole edition (45 copies of which 15 are boxed) will be complete, having been bound at the Fine Book Bindery. The earliest copies of this letterpress edition started to be collected about four years ago, and printing began not long after my printing press arrived from Brighton. I should celebrate...

I love the way The Chapel Row Gallery in Bath has exhibited our books for their recent exhibition. They were laid out to make looking and handling such an easy pleasure. 'Sleep Walking' is there on the table. Small books were in open cabinets.

Thank you Fine Press Book Association for organising this show! I wish there was a permanent space somewhere so I could finish reading Neil Boulsford's engraved 'Cycle' images, arranged in chapters on the right hand wall. It would be so good if the V&A (who have his book) kept a permanent changing space for books to be seen.

A Storm of Stars

2010-01-26T14:38:00.001-08:00

I've been spending more time coming up with book shapes, less in the etching and printing rooms (thanks to book fairs!) It is a real privilege for a visual artist to have such creative interchanges. At the very busy Oxford fair time just flew by. At a much smaller fair in Cirencester the week after, I sold the only completed A/P copy of 'Recovered ; A Storm of Stars Vol. 1' So there's a chance for a rethink before I go into production...

This book (in three small volumes) about 12 women in 1912 and about display, in the shapes of hats and print, needed a new form. The emerging new one (in this photo with its hatbox) is much more about 'display'.
The earlier version (see last year's blog entry) will still exist in it's more secretive form, for research and biography that is still being 'Recovered' and that can be hidden away and rediscovered between pages held together by wooden, printed and sharpened hatpins.

I was delighted that the new book form, which came about totally through expediency because I wanted to put pages into a hatbox, also formed itself into star shapes. One hatbox will hold 'A Storm of Stars' in three volumes. The book's title was taken from a poem by Marina Tsvetaeva.

Here is an invitation to an exhibition in Bath in February during the Bath Literature Festival.

Berlin City Cypher

2010-01-10T14:03:00.000-08:00

Leonie Lachlan is shortly going to print the next book in her award winning City Cypher series with p's & q's Press. These images show the lino cuts for City Cypher: Berlin in progress in Leonie's Tea Building Studio in Shoreditch.

The architectural codes for the City Cypher series are taken from Leonie's drawings from tall buildings in cities across the world.

Oxford Book Fair

2009-10-11T02:37:00.000-07:00

Below are the details for the next fair in Oxford. The p's & q's press will be there.

Thank you to Carolyn Trant for lending your camera to take this photo of the London Art Book Fair at the Whitechapel.
It was lovely to meet a whole new public at the Whitechapel as well as catching up with some old faces (we were next to Rocket). A Memorable Fancy and Leonie's City Cypher books were very well received. As you can see Leonie was given the Birgit Skiold Memorial Award for the purchase of City Cypher: Paris and City Cypher: Sao Paulo for the V & A.

London Art Book Fair

2009-09-21T07:28:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-21T06:43:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-21T05:46:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-21T05:34:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-19T10:47:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-13T11:53:00.000-07:00

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.