Artist's Book: Battered

95mm x 215mm with 22 printed, folded pages.

Yellow fly-leaf and endpaper with maker's emboss.
Japanese account book style binding in red silk thread with PVC tablecloth covers.
Book packaged in white food bag printed with an original 2-colour lino print.
Each book comes with its own Mermaid Chip Fork and Miracle Fish.

Limited edition of 20, each copy is numbered and signed.
Made in Brighton in October 2009.


This book has a dual message; on one hand it’s a celebration of British chips but on the other it’s a lament to the declining cod stocks. The book is called Battered to reflect these two sides, both the cooking and the over-fishing. The Atlantic cod is a fish in crisis, stocks have suffered heavily from overfishing on both sides of the Atlantic. All stocks are classified as being overfished or at risk of being harvested unsustainably.

The sequence of pages through the book shows images of a packet of chips being eaten, next to an image of slowly disappearing cod. The reverse pages show photographs taken over a number of years in the U.K., Gibraltar and Spain of chip chop advertising boards or 'A' boards. The book is covered in a yellow check PVC tablecloth bound in the style of a Japanese account book - the pages are folded at the leading edge. The book is presented in a white chip shop bag that's been printed with a 2-colour lino of the title of the book. Each book holds within its pages a Mermaid Chip Fork and Miracle Fish.

Mermaid Chip Forks kindly provided by Ashwood Timber, Dartford, Kent, U.K.

Battered appeared in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2010
The Royal Academy invited me to enter a book for this show since they were looking to promote book arts during the Summer Exhibition. ( I was one of about a dozen British Book artists specially invited).
14 June—22 August 2010
Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD
As part of the Summer Exhibition the Royal Academy shop also stocked a number of titles from Damp Flat Books; Anxious Homes, Running A Secret Society No.20, Damp in Ditchwater, Mortal Coil and of course copies of Battered.

Battered was also exhibited in the 2nd Sheffield Artist's Book Prize Exhibition.
October 8th - October 31st, 2009.
Held to coincide with the Off the Shelf Festival which takes place annually in Sheffield.
32-40 Bank Street, Sheffield, S1 2DS

Artist's Book: Evil Eyes

Softback book bound in oatmeal-coloured card. Portrait format measuring 190mm x 110mm.
Title is bound in beads into the spine and closed with a green elastic band.
21 printed pages with tipped-in photos. Photo pages are date stamped.
Second edition of 20, Brighton 2006
First Edition of 10 was made in hardback with a cloth cover (2005)

Whilst travelling to work it was noted, by certain keen individuals, that the world appeared to be full of beings: other than the everyday. With the assistance of an adapted mobile phone camera these ghosts, animal spirits, numen and peri that crowd around us can now be revealed. Mostly captured during regular days – frequently when rain was in the sky. So far we have managed to identify only a few of them – what we know is here, along with our clearest photos and some of our thoughts.
Damp Research Laboratory

To see all the spreads in this book click here...

The images below are photos of the cloth bound first edition.

Damp Flat Books Collected Works Catalogue

I've just released this Collected Works Catalogue, it details all of my artist's books and includes an introduction and list of which collections and libraries they can bee seen in. You can click the image below to read it online.

Artist's Book: Be Nice When It's Finished - Berlin

I'm please to announce Be Nice When It's Finished - Berlin has just been purchased by the National Art Library in the V & A Museum, London. The book joins their prestigious bookarts collection.

 

Be Nice When It's Finished - Berlin
Leporello constructed from a single A3 sheet folded to make 16 pages.
80mm X 100mm with separate grey card folding cover with silver lining and silver 'pipe' on front.
Red and white ribbon is bound into the book to resemble builder's hazard tape, and keep the book closed. Brighton 2014. Edition of 20 - all numbered and signed plus embossed with Damp Flat Books name.

Micro Artist's Book celebrating the major building works that have become a regular feature of Berlin. After visiting Berlin in 2006 I was amazed at the scale of building works and in a return visit in 2013 it was still just as frenzied. A walk round the city made me feel as if I was in a real-life 'Sim City' that was constantly being knocked down and rebuilt around me, I took lots of photos of the pink pipes, cranes, hazard tape and false facades. Berlin is a dynamic place to be and there's a strange feeling that if you turn your back the building behind you might not be there when you turn around again. It's 25 years since the Wall has come down but the city itself has still not worked out what it's wants to be and the transformations are constant. The title of the book is from a quip my uncle Harry used to make when we came across building works in London (or any city) - "London, be nice when it's finished". I love the idea that one day Berlin will be finished, - maybe I'll visit in another seven years and have a look.

Artist's Book: Damp in Ditchwater

 Postcard souvenir booklet. First edition of twenty - Brighton UK
Heavy yellow card cover with shaped edge, printed in either, burnt-orange or turquoise.
Introduction page followed by 10 detachable heavyweight colour postcards with tissue interleaves.
One card contains a tipped-in stamp and handwritten salute.

"A charming history - told through postcards - of the philanthropic, family-run Damp Industries’

partnership with the sleepy town of Ditchwater-by-Sea. Damp Industries’ self-appointed mission, is to strive until culture, learning and suitable products reside in the South."

In this sequence of ten postcards the intriguing relationship between Damp
and Ditchwater-by-Sea is slowly revealed.
.....What happened on the opening day at the Damp Museum?
.....Who wears the Cod-Sash?
.....Why is the curator missing?

This book has grown out my fascination for less-than-exciting museums. I particularly enjoy the secondhand mannequins with scuffed noses and displays that have been gathering dust for years. I make a point of searching out the least-popular tourist attractions, in the hope of finding a display of manky plastic fruit or - my favourite - a historical family diorama. The trend in swish, technologically interactive museums are fine for children, but the creepy dank interiors of the deserted local museum are my delight. I have been recording these museum interiors for a number of years in the hope of celebrating these fast-disappearing gems. The second-rate displays often reveal an 'any old rubbish for the tourists' attitude that is sharper than any deliberate satire.

The narrative behind Damp in Ditchwater is the story of an unscrupulous company that, hounded out of its own country, has started over again in England. The clash of values, along with the townsfolk's desperation to 'be put on the map' reveals itself through the comments on the reverse of the postcards. Starting slight but getting more and more vocal until there is little room to actually write a message on the postcard. The Damp employees and Ditchwater townsfolk have an uneasy alliance, where both are grittedly out-for-themselves.

To read the whole book, scroll here:

Selected Exhibitions:

The Southern Cross University Acquisitive Artists’ Book Award is coordinated by the SCU Next Art Gallery, 89 Magellan Street, Lismore, NSW, Australia.
Now in it’s 5th year this annual award provides Southern Cross University with an opportunity to continue to develop an artists’ book collection of national significance and in so doing also contribute to the development and awareness of artists’ books as an art form. Exhibition opening & announcement of acquisitions August 11 - exhibition continues to September 22.
Damp in Ditchwater has been selected for this exhibition.

Place, Identity and Memory – books made by artists
Opens 23 May to 28 June 2009, Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries, Scotland.
Then the exhibition tours libraries and other venues across Dumfries and Galloway, ending at Stranraer Museum, 55 George Street, Stranraer, DG9 7JP, Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland between the 26th September – 31st October 2009, to coincide with the annual Literary Festival at nearby Wigtown, Scotland’s Book Town. This is a travelling exhibition by IRIS. The aim of IRIS is to develop Dumfries and Galloway as a recognised centre for book arts in Scotland and internationally.
Headroom and Damp in Ditchwater both feature in the exhibition and catalogue.

Scheduled to appear in the November-December issue of the Book Arts Newsletter No.31, UWE, Bristol, UK

Babylon Lexicon - New Orleans, 14-30 Nov. 2008
Damp in Ditchwater and Headroom will be on show at the New Orleans Bookfair - Babylon Lexicon. - Future Fantasteek! Issue No.5 will also be exhibited, at the same time, during the New Orleans Zine Fair.

Re: 2008 The Gallery, The University of Northampton, Monday 12th – Thursday 29th May 2008
New book - Reboot has just been completed and accepted for the exhibition Re: 2008, Damp in Ditchwater joins the exhibition as part of The Ministry of Books Show.
Venues:

• The Gallery, The University of Northampton, Avenue Campus, Northampton, NN2 6JD, UK. 
• Artworks MK, Milton Keynes, UK from 14th July–14th August;
• Herefordshire College of Art – Summer 2008;
• The Space Gallery, University of Portsmouth from 3rd-14th November 2008.
• Quay Arts, Newport, Isle of Wight, UK

Artist's Book: Confidence

This small book measures 95mm x 95mm.
Stitched binding, 12 pages printed in black & white with a pink centerspread.
Each book contains elements tipped-in by hand, such as tickets, cards and rubber stamps.
Produced in editions of 25, First Edition produced in 1997.

This book was inspired by the idea of cheating. There are pages on how to cheat at various games such as monopoly, cards, rolling dice as well as bigger cons such as winning a raffle through to the lottery jackpot. The book itself however, is as fake as the cheats it describes, obviously written by a fraudster. This book comes with a slipcase belonging to a different book (sporting themes), in order to hide Confidence on the bookshelf - The slipcases all have unique titles. The tone is humorous targeting the gullible who believe you can really, get-rich-quick.

Artist's Book: Surely Not!

The book measures 102mm x 202mm.

Stiched binding, containing 8 pages, a central gatefold on orange card with an orange card cover. 

This book was part of my practice-based PhD on anxiety in advertising.

This book was inspired by the notion that, when looked at closely, smoking a cigarette is a strange activity. The Bob Newhart monologue 'The Introduction of Tobacco to Civilisation' is a case in point. Smoking is not a basic need such as eating or drinking but rather a skill that, once the fundamentals are learnt, requires practice and patience to develop. The "believe-it-or-not" strategy was based loosely on Ripley's regular feature in newspapers and collections from the 'fifties, but the images were developed from cigarette advertisements from the U.S. between 1938-72 and then redrawn to place emphasis on the absurdity of the activity. Grubby marks on the illustrations were enhanced to give the feel the images are 'dirty' as printed.

I composed the text in a style aiming to satirise the short-snappy 'Amazing Facts' tone of children' comics or encyclopedias. Texts aimed at younger readers often seem to convey the anxiety that the reader will tire of a subject should the copy spread to more than 5 lines. I have made sure that the concepts in Surely Not jump breathlessly from theme to theme at high speed never allowing the reader to dwell on one story for long. The font chosen was one resembling a style often employed in comics to give the feeling that the text had been hand written. 'Comic Sans' is heavy and stolid but its informal structure tries desperately to imply jollity. The central gatefold shows the Smoking Beagle, hopefully reminding the reader of the vast number of beagles that were used to test cigarettes (to public outrage in the late eighties). The gatefold was designed to sit on orange heavy weight paper, along with the cover. The main pages were printed on 130g cartridge paper. The orange and white colours are reminiscent of the colours used in marketing a regular cigarette of the period.

This book is held in various permanent collections including:

The V&A Museum, UK

Golda-Meir Library, UWM LIbraries, Milwaukee, USA

The Culture Archive, Brighton, UK

Eton College Library, UK

Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, Chicago, USA

The British Library, London, UK

St. Peter's House Library, Brighton, UK

Knights Park Library, Kingston University, Kingston-Upon-Thames, UK

Howard Gardens Library, University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, South Wales

Artist's Book: Null and Void

This small book measures 100mm x 100 mm
Folding concertina with 17 pages printed in black and white with spot red.
Produced in editions of 17, first produced in Brighton in 1999.

A humorous if bogus history of the concept of 'zero' packaged in a bag so that 'nothing' falls out.

First edition cover

Artist's Books List

These are the links to all my artist’s books. There are also direct links on the right side of this blog menu. Click on a thumbnail to visit the site.