Artist's Book: Mean Bone (The)

This small hard backed concertina book measures 8cm x 9cm closed.

Length 112cm when fully extended.
Folding concertina with 16 pages printed in black and white with spot orange.
Digitally printed in one section on heavyweight matt stock. 
All numbered, signed and embossed with Damp Flat Books’ logo.

Cover is hardback bound with 2-tone orange book cloth.

Outer casing is  a black card slipcase with dye-cut arrow.
First edition of 20 produced in Brighton in 2017.

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Micro Artist’s Book containing a selection of illustrated idioms from several languages (Welsh, French, German, English, Latvian and Spanish). The idioms are all unkind expressions that reveal our inherent impatience with other human beings. The title ‘Mean Bone’ comes from the English expression “She hasn’t got a mean bone in her body” (to mean a kindly person), this book however, contains only ‘mean bones’ - all the snide comments that undermine. The Illustrations are a combination of scraper-board and lino cuts, artistic methods chosen to reflect the scratching and cutting of our languages - words can be painful.

The sequence of pages:

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Damp Flat Books in exhibition: Ars Libris: Artists’ Books as Ergodic Texts

I'm pleased to announce that Damp Flat Books will be exhibited as part of a group show Ars Libris: Artists’ Books as Ergodic Texts in Bilkent University Library, Art Gallery in Ankara, Turkey, from October 12th to November 13th, 2017
Curated by Andrew J. Ploeg and Attila Gullu.

On show will be Mean Bone

Evil Eyes

Future Fantasteek! No.18

From exhibition organisers website:

'Artists’ books' is a term coined by Diane Vanderlip to describe the pieces gathered in an
exhibition that she curated at Moore College of Art in 1973. But the concept itself arguably dates back much earlier. Defying description and evading definition, artists’ books have generally come to denote works of art crafted as or from actual books. They emphasize physical qualities over literary ones and necessitate unconventional relationships with their “readers,” demanding interactions that are radically distinct from those of traditional books. The difficulty intrinsic to such interactions speaks to the nature of artists’ books as ergodic texts, texts that Espen J. Aarseth maintains require a nontrivial, extra-intellectual effort to traverse. Despite, or perhaps because of, their elusiveness and complexity, such books, including those fashioned by Brian Dettmer, Georgia Russell, Kaspen, and many others, challenge the presumed parameters of the
textual and the visual. In doing so, they raise and respond to urgent questions regarding art, literature, and readership.

Bilkent University Library, Art Gallery in Ankara

Exhibition photos, kindly taken byAttila Gullu

The Mean Bone - Exhibition

The first copy of The Mean Bone has been accepted for exhibition to cities of the Kirov region in Russia. As part of the collective Artistsbooks Russia.

The exhibition is titled 'Winged phrases, maxims and aphorisms' in ARTIST BOOK format.

"This topic seems to us, it is of interest not only by the content, but opens before the artist a wide range of technical and creative possibilities. Given the fact that this genre of literary work is brief, concise form, but succinct in content, it does not require a large area for the realization of the design, we decided to spend it in a miniature book format, that is no more than 100x75 mm."
From the collective's website: http://artistsbook.ru/en/Projects/

I'll add more information when the dates/locations are confirmed, but here is a preview of my new book.