To mark this anniversary year eight artists were invited to produce a new book each in response to Dante’s life and works.
The participating artists are: Kate Bernstein, Ian Bottle, Prerna Chandiramani, Judy Goldhill, Sophie Loss, John McDowall, Carolyn Trant and Martín Vitaliti.
Kate Bernstein creates contemporary work in response to historical sources; with artists’ books and screenprint forming the core of her practice. A Masters in printmaking and extensive training in bookbinding enable her to select the appropriate form and materials for each book and to mix printing into conventional and contemporary binding practices. Bernstein has recently been funded by Arts Council England to work on book arts in collaboration with the Librarian at the Royal Astronomical Society, London, exploring the role of early printed books in the dissemination of astronomical knowledge. Printing in an open access print studio and sharing her binding skills through teaching is fundamental to her practice, furthering her engagement with other artists. Bernstein has work in both private and public collections, collaborates on projects such as World Book Night and has regularly exhibited at Artists’ Books fairs including BABE and Turn the Page.
http://www.katebernsteinbookartist.co.uk/
Ian Bottle’s work is concerned with time and memory and how it might be embodied in material and spatial conditions. Working methods have been influenced as much by the impact of technological advances in the storage and retrieval of information as they have by a compulsion to find clarity in circumstances that seem inherently contradictory. The simultaneous building up and breaking down of an image or object until a coherent structures emerges is driven by a desire to make sense of the ambiguous correlation between patterns within our perception, thought and action.
Prerna Chandiramani is a Bristol-based artist with Indian cultural roots. With a Masters in Multidisciplinary printmaking, Chandiramani continues her practice from Spike Print Studio where she has been recently awarded the Peter Reddick bursary for Innovation in Relief Printing. Chandiramani makes prints and artist’s books in response to personal narratives. Communication forms a key element in her practice. With a multi-disciplinary approach, she engages with language, the written word and explores the materiality of paper through fold and stitch.
https://www.prernachandiramani.com
Judy Goldhill has been involved in the creative use of photography for several decades. She has participated in numerous exhibitions, collaborative and solo, and has held 4 artists residencies in astronomical observatories in North and South America. Her work includes video installations, artist’s books and assemblages. Judy’s book works explore movement, stillness and repetition. Her artist’s books have been acquired by numerous collections, including Tate, V&A, The New York Public Library, Yale University’s Library and MACBA. The British Library has acquired her complete collection of bookworks. She won the Birgid Skiold award for excellence at the London Artist’s Book Fair.
Sophie Loss is a London based artist working mainly in the medium of artists’ books. She initiated and coordinates AMBruno, an artists’ coalition that facilitates the development and dissemination of book works; central to AMBruno’s program is the production of new books made to a given theme. Sophie has worked with the MA Camberwell Book Arts, UAL program and is joint organiser of the British Library’s Artists’ Books Now series of events. Her work is held in private and institutional collections, in the UK and abroad. “I delight in the material qualities of books; the paper and the page, each with its own singularity within sequences, a flowing of time both fictive and real, amalgamating the reality and illusions of flat representations of three-dimensions.”
http://ambruno.co.uk/sophie-loss.html
John McDowall is an artist and printmaker whose work is principally in the medium of the book. The subject and locus of this aspect of his practice is the bibliographic in that it is concerned with the associative and physical properties of the book, investigating the nature of the temporality of self-reflexive dynamics as an underlying characteristic of the work’s experience, work that often has its genesis in, and incorporates instances of literary fiction. Artists’ books are also the focus of diverse curatorial and commissioning projects, and are also a central research topic.
http://ambruno.co.uk/john-mcdowall.html
Carolyn Trant. Previously a painter, I make hand-made and printed Artists Books, and always find inspiration in the medieval and early modern periods: people then were on the cusp of new technologies at the same time as using a wealth of organic materials … new ways of paper-making and printing, books as objects for display, whilst religious paintings could be folded up for private devotions or opened out like a book for mass education. It seems so exciting and relevant to us now as we adapt to new methods of communication and books are less constrained to provide basic information and can fly free….
http://carolyntrantparvenu.blogspot.com/
Martín Vitaliti. Buenos Aires 1978, lives and works in Barcelona. His work focuses on the analysis of the codes of verbo-iconic narration in comics, in order to reflect on this language more as of another narrative construction of contemporary art. His publications include Líneas cinéticas, Didascalias, Fondos (Save As… Publications, 2009 -13), 360º (Arts Libris Award – Walther Konig, 2016), Action Comics Détournement (ferran ElOtro Editor, 2019), Tapetum Lucidum (ferran ElOtro Editor, 2021), Ampo (Ediciones Marmotilla, 2021).
His most recent exhibited works include: The idea of an image, Fundació Suñol (Barcelona, 2021); To be two you have to be different, etHALL Gallery (Barcelona, 2020) 9:12/3, Barcelona Gallery Weekend, Compositions curatorial programme (Barcelona, 2017); Diana’s two handkerchiefs, etHALL Gallery, (Barcelona, 2017); #134, in the exhibition If walls Are Trembling, Lisa Kandlhofer Gallery (Vienna, 2016); Light Ink, at Fummeto Comix-Festival (Luzern, 2016).
http://martinvitaliti.net/index.php?/Obras/