Output details

Café Royal Books pop-up library: How can gallery spaces be used for other purposes than exhibitions?

The Café Royal Pop-up Library [2010] showcased 800 artists’ books and editions. The gallery was presented as a reading room to examine the space as a venue for events other than exhibitions.

Artists with significant international profiles were invited to submit their titles for inclusion. The result was one of the largest international publically accessible collections and surveys of contemporary artists’ publications to date, outside of major gallery collections. The event was documented online.

In 2012 Atkinson curated the first ‘International Drawing Project’, and work selected for the exhibition came from over 20 countries and included 80 artists, including film, drawing, and publications. Over 6000 drawings were submitted for inclusion, the project being noted on many contemporary art and culture blogs, for example, Booooooom.com, which from July 2012 to July 2013 averaged around 15,000 unique visitors each month.

As a result of his work investigating and commissioning artists at the forefront of contemporary drawing practice with gallery director, Sophia Crilly (Bureau Manchester), Michael Redmond (winner of the 2011 Victoria and Albert Illustration Award RCA) and Neil Morris (Reader in Contemporary Printmaking at Liverpool John Moore’s University), Atkinson initiated the organisation of a symposium. The essays papers and lectures were then published as part of an international Survey of Drawing and a series of catalogues.

To introduce the International Drawing and Photography Project (2013) he commissioned Lawrence Zeegen, Sarah Bodman and Jörg M. Colberg (‘American Photo’ Magazine) to write essays focussing on print, photography, artists’ books and drawing as methods of research and communication.