Clive Phillpot

Books On Books Collection – Julien Nédélec

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Because he works with so many different materials, it is hard to classify Julien Nédélec as an artist: A polyfabricant? With language play being a more or less constant theme: A polywright? His website labels him a plasticien, the perfect French word that captures more of the media in which he works than its usual translation “visual artist” does. In Zéro2, Antoine Marchand writes:

Everything, with him, is subject to manipulation, appropriation, and diversion, at times in the most trivial and basic way imaginable. His work is based on permanent mischief, a desire to destabilize the viewer, and be forever creating a slight discrepancy, which barely ruffles the reading of the work—well removed from the showiness of many present-day productions. He bypasses the daily round and takes us towards somewhere else that is not that far away, but all the more joyful. … What should incidentally be underscored in this young artist’s praxis is his ability to move from one medium to another, without the slightest bother or apprehension. It is impossible to pigeonhole Julien Nédélec’s praxis in any one particular medium.

Several of his works have been hosted on the Greek island of Anafi by the Association Phenomenon and the Collection Kerenidis Pepe, whose website also notes that his

practice can take many forms, from sculpture to drawing, through books and photography, with a predilection for the paper, that he uses not only as a support, but also as a material that he bends, cuts, colors, stacks or crumples. His works are the result of linguistic and formal games that reveal the artist’s fascination with the potentialities of language, with a malice that places him as an heir apparent of the Oulipo, while his taste for geometric and serial shapes brings him closer to the tradition of minimalism.

With paper as a favorite medium, there are a handful of artist’s book among the many other forms. Taken together, his artist’s books almost make up an anthology of homage to book artists from the 1960s to the present. He also belongs to the school of appropriators embracing forerunners like Bruce Nauman, Richard Prince, and Richard Pettibone and contemporaries like Michalis Pichler, Antoine Lefebvre, and Jérémie Bennequin, all of whom have embraced the self-reflexive artist’s book as an appropriate medium for appropriation. No wonder Galaad Prigent’s Zédélé Éditions, the French publisher that hosts Anne Moeglin-Delcroix and Clive Phillpot’s Reprint Series of artists’ books, is so fond of his bookworks.

TER (2021)

TER (2021)
Julien Nédélec
Softcover, saddle stitch with staples. H240 W165 mm. [36] pages. Acquired from Zédélé Éditions, 21 September 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with the artist’s permission.

“Tout”

The sentences to be deciphered from these full-page-bleed letters are Tout a été redit. Tout a été refait, which, in English, would be “Everything has been said. Everything has been done.” But it also has the echoes of a French children’s song, “Tout ce que je fais“:

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Books On Books Collection – Megan N. Liberty

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Craft & Conceptual Art : Reshaping the Legacy of Artists’ Books (2023)

Craft and Conceptual Art: Reshaping the Legacy of Artists’ Books (2023)
Megan N. Liberty, ed.
Perfect bound, embossed and ink printed cover. H302 x W229 mm. 118 pages. Acquired from San Francisco Center for the Book (CODEX), 5 February 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Megan Liberty’s traveling exhibition and catalogue serve two related purposes.

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Bookmarking Book Art – The British Library’s “Artists’ Books Now” series

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Recent exhibition of art from Oliver Jeffers’ and Sam Winston’s A Child of Books. The British Library.

Richard Price and his team at The British Library just concluded their fifth event in this series of “show and tell” talks by book artists. Most of the events have staked a claim to some relationship with a British Library event or exhibition current at the time — World Book Night, Writing: Making your Mark, and Buddhism — but the title of this fifth event punningly encapsulates the real point of the entire series: “Contemplating: Artist’s Books Now”.

When picturing an artist’s book what do you imagine?  Intricate design, ornate bindings, blank space, fold outs and pop-up rinsed through with vibrancy of text and colour. Is it something more unearthly and harder to describe? An air of peace in the topsy-turvy hullabaloo of our modern world.  A pause of contemplation as a work speaks to you? Or, on the contrary, is it a space of immense energy, of ‘thought-provocation’, where contemplation is something you feel compelled to do to make sense of the sensations and ideas the book stimulates? “Contemplating: Artists’ Books Now”

Whether the organizing theme has been “here and now” “place”, “Latin America“, “writing” or “contemplation”, the evening inevitably turns to reflecting on the nature of book art, bookworks, the artist’s book, the book arts, bookness and even art itself. Even with 50-60 in the audience and four to six presentations, Price and team have arranged the agenda to allow for hands-on “viewing” of the works, conversations with the artists and question time that evolves into a room-wide conversation, not just Q&A.

So far, the team — consisting of book artists and researchers Egidija Čiricaitė and Sophie Loss and the librarians Jeremy Jenkins and Richard Price — has attracted a consistently eclectic, talented and insightful set of artists, collectors, curators, librarians, academics and moderators for each event. To name but a few: Danny Aldred, Lucy Bell, Tracey Bush, Nancy Campbell, Maria Fusco, John McDowall, Gill Partington, Caroline Penn, Clive Phillpot, Francisca Prieto, Chris Taylor, Michael Wellen, Maria White and Sam Winston.

One wishes for Artists’ Books Now once a month! Not to detract from the efforts and energy of the team, but how hard and wonderful would it be to coordinate a future series of Artists’ Books Now to coincide the weeks before or after Bristol’s Book Artists Event, Edinburgh’s Artists’ BookMarket, Liverpool’s Artists’ Book Fair, Leeds‘ International Contemporary Artists’ Book Fair, Norwich’s Turn the Page and Sheffield’s revived Artists’ Book Fair?