Tuesday 10 July 2007

Future Fantasteek! Issue No.3

ISSUE THREE : JULY 2007
...Carbon Footprint Issue 


Softback Zine printed in greyscale on yellow paper, staple bound with central section in colour. 

A5 size containing 16 printed pages. Bronze cover with dye cut shape.
Issue three: Brighton 2007, edition size of fifty.

Once again, the Damp Flat Research team share their fantastic inventions, ideas and advice.
The evil central colour pull-out has a mirror where you can see your evil twin or simply worry more with the new Damp Worry Doll

There are inventions to help you spot a bad idea; pretend to talk like a grown-up or slow yourself down to avoid having to do anything.
That and so much more - are you really being watched? 



To view this zine in more detail visit:

Or to flick through online visit issuu at:

Future Fantasteek! will soon available from:
PURE GROOVE Music Store, 679 Holloway Road, London N19 5SE, UK

Friday 6 July 2007

Sitting Room - Exhibition

Sitting Room Exhibition has continued on to Winchester Gallery at Winchester School of Art.
The show opens on 6th July, with a private view on 11th July, and runs until 2nd August 2007.
Anxious Homes from Damp Flat Books is part of the group show, see 2006 news below for more details about this exhibition. 
http://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/sitting07.htm












Wednesday 4 July 2007

Damp Flat Books feature in lecture.

ARLIS/UK and Ireland Annual Conference‘Useful and; Beautiful? Supporting the Arts and Crafts in the 21st Century’
Park Campus, University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, Wednesday 4th July – Friday 6th July 2007. Damp Flat Books are featured in, Page on Page – an overview of Contemporary British and Irish Artists’ Books, a talk given by Sarah Bodman.

Sunday 1 July 2007

New Book - Mortal Coil



11” (28cm) width x 4” (10.5cm) height x ½” (1cm) thickness – approx.



Unfolded each page is 15” long (39cm)
Heavy grey millboard covers.
Wire binding in dark green.
Nine pages, eight of which fold-out, printed on 130gsm cartridge paper
Trace fly-leaf, title of book on embossed vertical belly-band, numbered and signed in an edition of ten, made in Brighton, United Kingdom 2007

Much of my previous work has centred around themes of advertising and anxiety, recently I have been experimenting with photo collage and hand drawn typography. I usually write my own texts, but your exhibition requirements were really interesting - affording me the opportunity to explore some new literature. In response to a forthcoming exhibition in Kentucky I started to explore the visual possibilities of the poems of Robert Penn Warren. I’ve based my book Mortal Coil on the poem, Mortal Limit by Robert Penn Warren.

The text of the poem is split into 7 sections, hand drawn typographically to emphasise key words. The typography sits above photo collages (taken in the South of England) exploring the melancholy of the landscape as it metamorphoses from undeveloped ruralscapes into urban jungles. Themes of urban decay and environmental issues are very much in focus in Britain at the moment, and it was fascinating in the poem to have aspirational descriptions of the landscape tinged with the failings of the human spirit. The book is designed to have folding pages that when opened-up reveal darker elements from the previous page. The symbol of the hawk is a reminder of the source of the text,
a favourite motif of the poet.
My book both begins and ends with the image of the hawk (a familiar icon within Penn Warren's work). The colours in the book change from greens through to blacks and reds as the threat to the landscape is realised. The book is created using a combination of photoshop, digital photography, hand drawn typography, quarkxpress and illustrator.

The title Mortal Coil derives from an archaic English expression (still in use) meaning the ‘troubles of the world’ – popularised by Shakespeare in Hamlet.


This book was created for the exhibition:



Visions and Voices: Art Inspired by Kentucky Poetry, Prose and Songwriting
7th July - 6th October 2007
Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft
Louisville. KY 40202
USA