4th Sheffield International Artists Book Prize

This exhibition runs at Bank Street Arts in Sheffield from Saturday 5th October till Saturday 30th November. Andy Parsons and Glenn Holman's book 'Beckett Bucket' from 2012 and Glynis Candlers new book 'Tangled Web' will both be on display at the exhibition. Both Glenn and Glynis are veterans of the Prize having had works excepted for the 3 previous exhibitions. This 4th instalment of the biennial prize looks to be the best yet, with over 450 works on display. For the first time a full colour catalogue is being produced to accompany the exhibition. Details of the exhibition can be found at: http://artistsbookprize.co.uk 

Alongside the SIABP, Bank Street Arts have two other artist book exhibition on, Artist Book Showcase will feature works from previous artists exhibited at various venues in and around Sheffield and The Ice Book, a miniature theatre show made of paper and light. Details of both exhibitions can be found at Bankstreetarts.com

Three good reasons to make a visit to Sheffield we recon.

Here's a video of how we made Beckett Bucket...

Floating World at Get Together 2013

Floating World were delighted to show three books as part of Visual Artists Ireland's Get Together 2013. The books were on display in the Artists’ Books stand in the Common Room area at Get Together 2013 at National College of Art and Design, and we are delighted to say a copy of each was purchased by NIVAL for their collection.

The books on show were.

Sticks and stones

Andy Parsons  

15 x 21cm, unlimited edition, 

Published by Floating World.

Sticks and Stones is a collection of images seen on car journeys  from Sligo to Donegal.The images reference the history of the depiction of landscape and explore the idea of a collision between the sublime and the everyday. 

Spitfire 
Glenn Holman
Hand stitched A5 booklet in an edition of 50, signed and numbered by the artist.
24 pages, B&W and colour images and text. 

On one level, Spitfire can be seen as an exploration of personal and cultural memory; how our memories are a construction, mediated by personal choice, acquired knowledge and self mythologising. How we choose to remember, forget or reconfigure our personal histories to construct the identity we wish to project. It explores how often the most significant events in our lives are seemingly the most mundane, or how we choose to elevate them to greater significance in a quest for self knowledge and understanding.

Alternatively, Spitfire could be simply be seen as a visual poem to how 21 pale blue plastic parts can make a four year old boy very, very happy.

Passing Through

Glynis Candler

Hand stitched A6 booklet in an edition of 50, 16 pages, colour text. Published by Floating World.

I use my sharp eye and poetic sensibility to produce lyrical book works that comment on the profound in unexpected ways. My particular interest is in the stages through which we pass focussing on life and what we encounter and discard along the way; the states of emotion and objects that can fade and recur from mind as our consciousness of life past and present evolves. All of my books are designed to provoke thought and reflection, whilst at the same time providing pleasure through the timelessness of the book format that can be revisited time and again. I bind and finish my books to reflect the ethos behind the contents. 'Passing Through' signifies the clean whiteness of new life with the vein of blood that keeps on flowing through life's emotional roller coaster of existence.

Our thanks to Michael Marie for the superb photos.

We have recently received a set of photos taken by photographer Michael Marie at one of the workshops held at the Crescent Art Centre in Belfast as part of our 'Reading Room' exhibition. Selections of these are included below and we would just like to extend our thanks to Michael for his generosity and urge you to check out his website or Facebook feed. Thanks again Michael, next time we are in Belfast, we own you a pint.


www.michaelmarie.com
https://www.facebook.com/michaelmariephotography

Work from the Making Room...

As part of Reading Room at the Crescent Arts Centre Belfast we created a Making Room and provide materials for members of the public to make their own books in the gallery. We also included two D.I.Y. books. 

The first was an A1 print based made form a sculpture (see below) which could be used as paper to make a book from.

Here's a photo of one of the prints on coloured paper used as a cover for a book by one of the participants in the two workshops we staged

Here's some images from the workshops, the two books below with orange covers use the three handmade rubber stamps we provided.

Sarah Carne talks about 'Line Drawing VII', part of Reading Room at Crescent Arts Centre Belfast

Line Drawing VII is, at its title suggest, the seventh in a series of drawings, of a diecast scale model Yugo, that I am exhibiting in galleries around the world in an attempt to create a trans-global line drawing.

With each drawing the exhibiting gallery receives a Yugo Car Pin that serves as a nominal map pin marking its location. Taking Paul Auster’s iconic detective novel The New York Trilogy as its initial inspiration, in which Auster’s street walking character Stillman spells out his message through the route he takes, as the project develops virtual connections are created between each Yugo pin point. Ultimately, if they were to be joined together with a physical line, the lines would spell written across both hemispheres I Love my Yugo.

Sitting within the framework of the ongoing multi-media project ‘I love my Yugo’ the car’s status, complicated by both personal and national inheritance, becomes elevated by scale and association. The original Yugo 45 was purchased in 1988 as a family car and inherited reluctantly in 1995. The car was then retired as a functioning vehicle in 2006 and itself transformed into an artwork through the addition of letraset text on its bodywork. It is currently in storage awaiting a musical.

Drawings have been exhibited so far in Moscow, Beijing, Sligo and London with Line Drawings V and VI also opening in Melbourne galleries Seventh and Screen Space this month. An excerpt from the video I Love my Yugo can be seen here http://www.sarahcarne.co.uk/videos/

Sarah Carne June 2013

more photos and a video tour of Reading Room at Crescent Arts Centre Belfast

Here's a photo of the new show at Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast. More to follow...

More Reading Room...

We will be reprising our exhibition Reading Room at The Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast from the 10th   to the 16th of June. 

Reading Room was originally staged at Sligo Art Gallery in 2009. It was made up of three rooms; a reading room with a sofa and bookshelves, a room of artworks in other media by Floating World Artists and a making room for members of the public to make their own books. 

This time we will have a reading room a making room and a drawing room. 

In the making room we will have two d.i.y. books available free of charge. More information soon...