PUBLISH/CURATE
1 August - 23 August 2014
TJ Boulting is delighted to announce our summer group show, where several leading independent
art and photobook publishers have been invited to curate the work of artists and photographers
of interest to them. In recent years there has been a prolific amount of activity in the art publishing
world, with fairs such as Offprint in Paris, specialist bookshops, organisations such as Printed
Matter who established the successful New York Art Book Fair, and particularly a rise in young
publishers, innovating on small budgets and producing exciting and original small-run publications,
often a far-cry from the traditional models seen before in art publishing.
To celebrate this renewed focus on publishing as a fertile area of artistic output, a small selection
of art and photobook publishers have been invited to present their chosen artists and photographers,
who in the majority of cases they have worked with on publications. It is an opportunity to
bring together not only the various artists and photographers, but also highlight the publishers
responsible for showcasing their work.
The slim economic return of publishing, especially in the general financial downturn, conversely
has led to a passionate and creative output for those who are, against the odds, bringing out new
and original publications. The talent often discovered through the selective process of each publisher
and the commitment inherent in the process of bringing a project to fruition, can be evaluated
in the fact that publishers now in many ways are the new curators.
The small-run of a few hundred copies, hand-made artist books of Riot and Akina Books can sell
out almost immediately, and here Akina present work from their forthcoming first offset printed
book by Italian photographer Federico Clavarino, whilst Riot present the Ukrainian photographers
Vladislav Krasnoshek and Sergiy Lebedynskyy, from their book ‘Euromaidan’, of the
Ukrainian riots earlier this year.
PUBLISH/ C U R A T E
Often the artist and photographer has directed this innovative attitude into their own work and
self-published, such as Italian photographer NicolШ Degiorgis and his recent acclaimed project
‘Hidden Islam’ of disguised mosques in northern Italy. Bruno Ceschel of Self Publish Be Happy has
been a pioneering platform in this area, and presents one of the early photographers he has worked
with, Lorenzo Vitturi, who is currently opening a solo show of his work at The Photographers’ Gallery
‘Dalston Anatomy’, in no small part thanks to the acclaimed book.
Harry Hardie and Ben Weaver of Here Press have released several original and unusual projects in
documentary photography, and together with Lewis Chaplin, a photographer and also publisher
of his own imprint Fourteen Nineteen, have collaborated on a new publication, the protagonist of
which is the subject here of Chaplin’s 6x7 portraits taken of him within his domestic environment.
Maxwell Anderson of Bemojake presents Tim Smyth from his forthcoming book documenting sinister
glimpses, in seemingly banal street scenes and landscapes, of President Assad in Syria. Damien
Poulain of Oodee presents slideshows of Viviane Sassen, Pieter Hugo, Charlotte Dumas and his
new series of books of female portraits in various global viewpoints. Swedish publisher Melk and
gallerist Bjarne Barne presents his own work in forthcoming publication ‘Grapnel Grapple’.
Alix Janta of Adad Books’s monochrome collection of works by different artists ‘Traces’, explores
the concepts of technicality and texture through various printing processes and techniques, either
classical or their own innovation. Hannah Watson of Trolley Books’s presentation in contrast is
‘Protanopiautopia’, where each artist harnesses the aesthetics of colour, and in particular pink, to
depict less than aesthetic subjects in a form of ‘colour blindness’ to their content. Ricardo Cases’s
brightly coloured pigeons from his acclaimed first book ‘Paloma al Aire’, and artists Boo Saville
and Henry Hudson, whose pink hues disguise a more sinister and less than fragrant subject matter.
Aron Morel of Morel Books looks back to the original printmaking techniques of William
Blake, created by Michael Phillips, an academic who studied the process in depth, and is presented
alongside polaroids taken by Patti Smith of Blake’s death mask.
Finally the London-based Archive of Modern Conflict presents their performance “30minute photo
book”, participants will be invited to cut up, stick and re-arrange books and images that the archive
has published. This will include works by Larry Towell, Cristina de Middel, Leo Griffin, Bruce
Gilden and more
