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34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of the West of England, Bristol
The Hybrid Lexicon: an overview of contemporary artists’ publishing in the UK and Ireland, using traditional and emerging technologies to create finely produced artists’ books
Bodman was invited to attend the first Codex Foundation symposium: ‘The Fate of the Art, The Hand Printed Book in the 21st Century’, at the University of California, Berkeley, (February 2007) as one of the four principal speakers. The subsequent chapter in Book, Art, Object is an edited and illustrated transcript of her symposium address, ‘The hybrid lexicon: an overview of contemporary artists’ publishing in the UK, utilising traditional and emerging technologies to create finely produced artists’ books’. The chapter explores, from the perspective of the artist, examples of artists’ books published over a span of approximately forty years. It focuses on the recent period and considers the impact of digital technologies into the realm of printmaking and book production, analysing various artists’ books to consider the creative possibilities of works produced using both traditional and digital forms of publishing. Bodman’s chapter analyses works by a broad range of both established and emerging British and Irish artists including: John Bentley, Helen Douglas, Ron King and Ian Tyson.
Bodman’s chapter forms part of a collection that contains an overview of international contemporary artists’ publishing, an exploration of the historical relationship between art, design and the book. It contains illustrated transcripts of the three symposium speakers: Robert Bringhurst (poet, philosopher and typographer), Felipe Ehrenberg (Artist, former publisher of the Beau Geste Press, London) and Dr Stefan Soltek (Director - Klingspor Museum, Germany), all of whom are devoted to artists’ books as poets, historians, artists and publishers. The book also includes five brief essays by prominent printers, artists, and designers from around the world and 735 examples of book works by the international artists, designers and printers who exhibited at the CODEX 2007 event in California.
