by Occasional Papers
27 April – 24 June 2022
BOOOOOKS invites a single arts publisher at a time and presents an overview of their work. For the third season, the entire catalogue of titles from British-Belgian publisher Occasional Papers is presented, including new and rare editions alongside out of print titles available for reading.
Occasional Papers was founded in 2008 by graphic designer Sara De Bondt and curator Antony Hudek from the perceived need for affordable books in art and design, ones that would cover new perspectives from the periphery. Originally established in the UK and now working out of Belgium, they have built a reputation for important books devoted to the histories of architecture, art, design, film and literature.
The founding of the press was a reaction to mainstream publishing, where only the most successful and famous stories are repeated over and over again, without talking about process. For Occasional Papers, it is important to highlight the process, how and why the art or design is made, from idea to finished product.
Artists include: Bernd Lohaus, Rita Mcbride, Bob Cobbing, Ellen Altfest, Stephen Willats, Paul Hendrikse, Ria Pacquée, John Latham, Hugo Roelandt, Henry van de Velde, Janice Kerbel, Roger Ackling, Adrien Henri, Robert Filliou, Eva Weinmayr ...
EVENTS
Saturday 28 May, 15:00, Free
BOOOOOKS in conversation: Peter Foolen and Sara De Bondt
Join us in our bookshop and garden for a conversation between two designers and publishers who have each become a key presence in the world of art book publishing.
Dutch designer, curator and publisher Peter Foolen began his life in publishing in the 1980s. Since 2007 he has worked as an independent designer and publisher under the name Peter Foolen Editions, working closely with contemporary artists such as herman de vries, Roger Ackling, Alan Charlton, Laurie Clark & Thomas A Clark, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Lesley Foxcroft, Hamish Fulton, Callum Innes, Peter Liversidge, Richard Long, Carol Robertson, Trevor Sutton, Ian Whittlesea and Nono Reinhold, to realise and publish works across various formats such as books, objects, prints and portfolios.
Sara De Bondt is a graphic designer, teacher, and publisher. Since 2002, she has designed books and projects for artists and cultural institutions such as Franz Erhard Walther, Mark Leckey, Rachel Rose, Rosalind Nashashibi, Tate, WIELS, Liverpool Biennial, Camden Arts Centre, Guggenheim, Barbican and many more. In 2008, she founded non-profit publishing house Occasional Papers together with Antony Hudek, and since then has edited a number of its books, including The Form of the Book Book, Graphic Design: History in the Writing (1983–2011) and Off the Grid: Histories of Belgian graphic design.
A wide selection of titles from Peter Foolen Editions and Occasional papers will be on display and available for sale.
BOOOOOKS by Coracle
13 October 2021 – 15 January 2022
BOOOOOKS invites a single arts publisher at a time and presents a selection of their work. For the first season, a collection from Coracle is presented that includes both recent and rare editions in a variety of formats produced over the past five decades.
Coracle is a small publishing press directed by writer and artist Erica Van Horn and poet, artist and editor Simon Cutts, from what was a small farm between the hills of South Tipperary, Ireland since 1996.
Mostly based in London from the nineteen seventies, as both a publisher, gallery, and a space for books, workfortheeyetodo became its last bookshop project there in the mid-nineteen nineties.
In this later remote form, it continues as printer-publisher, editor of spaces, employing many of the devices and formats of hypothetical publishing inherent in the small press. Inevitably, much of the content of the publishing is of the nature of the book itself, in both critical and playful dimensions. At the same time there is always the residue of poetry, and a concern with the mechanisms of the book as a manifestation of the poem itself, together with other books by artists, writers, and others without category.
The books themselves are not so concerned with craft tradition, limitedness of edition, hand-made paper and elaboration of binding, as with the plain and simple casebound book, the sewn paperback, the extensions of ephemera, and their availability.
Artists include: Ian Hamilton Finlay & Ian Gardner, Stephen Willats, Hamish Fulton, Richard Tuttle, Richard Long, Peter Downsbrough, Katie Holten, Erica Van Horn, Simon Cutts, Harry Gilonis, Anne Moeglin Delcroix, Shelagh Wakely ...
Living and Publishing in Tipperary
It was chance that brought us to this hidden part of rural Ireland in 1996. After bookshops and galleries made in a variety of urban places, we were seeking a project which might unify and integrate our activities as artists and publishers with a sense of place. In Tipperary, we found a fresh space and buildings which we could adapt to our needs.
With the accumulated backlist of Coracle, some of which had by now become quite rare, and with the modest production of four to six new books a year, we figured that we could survive from such a remote location. Added incentives were the fact of no Value Added Tax on books in Ireland as well as a tax exemption for the work we make as artists. A special book rate through the postal system made our life on this island possible. We could live and work here, well under the radar of bureaucracy, Essentially, publishing remains the same as always : the conceived book, its editing and production, its warehousing and distribution by whatever means. For Coracle, very little fits an existing format, and each printing presents its own problems and its own solutions. Or more fundamentally, as the American poet Charles Olsen said ”Don’t ever be intimidated by the disdain and disinterest in the world. Get yourself some type, get yourself some paper and print it.”
If one can publish from here, one can do it anywhere!
