Each year the artists’ group AMBruno sets a themed artist’s book project with a call for artists to respond. The theme for 2016, chosen by AMBruno members Sophie Loss (founder) and John McDowall, is ‘Words’.
Thirteen artists’ proposals were selected by independent artist’s book curator Maria White, with three guest artists also invited to produce books last September. McDowall explains the calls “offer very open, flexible opportunities to explore the nature and possibilities of the form of the book as primary medium. Past subjects include often overlooked characteristics of books as the starting point, such as ‘one-fold books’ or ‘lines’”.
Written language and its relationship with the book form is a recurring theme of AMBruno’s project calls. Two of this year’s selected books consider the theme from alternative approaches in content and structure.
Aymee Smith counters Plato’s assertion that artists and poets are merely representers who ‘have no contact with the truth’, i.e. that poets offer an illusion not a depiction of reality through their unreliable use of words. The book’s centre pages contain Chapter 9 of Plato’s Republic in dialogue with the lyrics to the song Words, by the Bee Gees.
Around these central pages, all the words from every song written by the group are arranged in alphabetical order by the artist and printed as a continuous text. In doing so, Smith has negated Plato’s argument through reducing a lifetime’s worth of lyrics to mere non-signifying components, to only ‘words’; there is no representation, ergo no lies.
The Barcelona-based artist Ximena Pérez Grobet’s approach was to consider the situation that actually creates words – space. As she says: “Without space, all words are only letters.” Her idea was to make a book “where the main character is space”.
This letterpress printed book emphasises the importance of space in both designing a page and deciphering its content. Pérez Grobet’s practice explores the visual language of letters through physical interventions, from installations to textile pieces. You can watch a lovely video of her making the piece, Reading Finnegans Wake, where she knits the novel into new forms, visually conveying the complexity of the text.
This year’s other participating artists are: Anne Rook, Colin Sackett, Egidija Čiricaitė, Erica Van Horn, Jane Grisewood, Judy Goldhill, Julien Nédélec, Katarina Kelsey, Luke Allan, Philip Lee, Rachel Smith, Sharon Kivland, Sophie Loss & John McDowall, and Steve Perfect.
These new books will be launched as Words, AMBruno’s stand display at PAGES: the Leeds International Artists’ Book Fair, 5-6 March 2016 at The Tetley, before touring throughout 2016.
