Artist Book Launch

We celebrated the launch of two new artists’ books, published by Yorkshire Sculpture International in partnership with Leeds Beckett University.

Early in 2019, Jo Hamill and Julia McKinlay were selected to create the books after the School of Art Architecture and Design at Leeds Beckett University issued an open call to staff and students for book proposals which explored sculpture in all its forms.  The books have been designed by Marit Münzberg.

Jo Hamill, Gutter Words

Jo Hamill is Course Director for Graphic Design at Leeds Beckett University and has made a new work exploring the sculptural space of language.

Working with an edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses, Hamill systematically obliterated the words of Joyce but carefully retained those words positioned closest to the gutter – the technical term used to describe the central margin of a bound page. The retained fragments form two extended columns that continue for 933 pages.

Notable here is how design and typographic terminology is so entrenched in bodily references. Header, footer, body-copy, the arm of a ‘K’, the crotch of a ‘Y’, the foot of a ‘T’, the ear of a ‘G’, the shoulder of an ‘R’ and so on. As is the architectural scaffolding of Joyce’s schema which underpins the structure of Ulysses, kidney, genitals, heart, lungs, oesophagus, brain, blood, ear. etc. Lawrence Weiner refers to language as material for construction, the act of deletion in Gutter Words exposes the architectural scaffolding that holds words in place. Voids are physical spaces to be read and words become unanchored, set adrift in an uncertain space. The architectural qualities of this physical space will be exposed, Gutter Words is devoid of the accoutrements associated with a ‘book’ such as cover, boards, end papers, dust jacket and will retain only the innards, an unprotected text block.

Softback in an edition of 500
197 x 127mm, 956 pages

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Julia McKinlay, Feeling the Underside

Julia McKinlay, artist and PhD student at Leeds Beckett University has made a limited edition collection of prints inspired by an encounter with a museum specimen of the shell collecting snail Xenophora.

She says ‘I was curious about the way that this animal gathers and cements found objects from the sea floor to its shell. In this collection of work, I am mimicking the Xenophora’s behaviour, to curate my own collections of images and objects and bring together disparate strands of research to find the connections.’

Edition of 25
Presented in an orange, embossed handmade box (300 x 400 x 70mm)
The box contains: nine etchings and collagraphs on Somerset Satin 300gsm (each 250 x 360mm), a folder of digital printed booklets and a small box containing a fragment of slag.

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