MANCHESTER ARTISTS' BOOK FAIR

Last friday a couple of us ventured to the Manchester Artists' Book Fair which took place in the Art School's Holden Gallery. The most interesting part of the day for me was actually talking to the artists who were there about the books and art pieces they had made. My only purchase was a book I had seen so many times before but never managed to buy one! It's called Printing at Home published by Ditto Press an independent publishing house and printing company based in London. The book is a kind of user manual in how to pimp up your printer to make it do some experimental fun printing. The book shows you how to a total of 9 pimpings! 1 - Printer burn out 2 - Watercolour printer 3 - Prepared printer 4 - Joystick printer 5 - Brush jet printer 6 - Springboard printer 7 - Rainbow printer 8 - Acid printer and 9 - Potato printer! I have no idea yet which one I might go for but I must say combining potatoes with printers does sound like fun! There was a lovely collection of book binding equipment available to buy from Conways of Halifax, but since never having used these tools before I wasn't sure of what to buy and until I actually need to make a book (which I'm sure will be soon) there didn't seem much point.

The two artists I spent most of my time chatting to were Graham Moss from Incline Press and David Barton, an Independent artist. Graham spoke to us about all of the different kinds of binding techniques he had used to make his books. He showed us some very neat tricks on how to hide parts that you don't want to be seen and how the book should be determined by the content rather than the usual 8 page ideal that most people work to when printing a book. If the content only fits onto 14 pages, then the book should only have 14 pages.

David Barton had nice selection of prints and books showing his paintings in which he draws the human figure. Rather than draw from the figure he tries to almost re-create it through gouache paintings. David also introduced me to the Artist's Yearbook which features a massive selection of artist's books, including some of the people at the art fair. At only £15, it's a real bargain, a bit of a yellow pages for anyone interested in this subject. The images below are of Graham Moss (second image) and David Barton (first image). Images borrowed kindly from the Manchester Art Fair Website.