Artist Books: From Concept to Distribution

This six week course will consider printmaking in the ecology of artist publishing practices. It will consider the notion of books (and artist books) and what role they can play in your creative practice - from conception to distribution.

Exploring bookmaking techniques (such as basic book binding skills), you will learn to integrate them into more hybrid means of production, that may involve seemingly incompatible processes, materials and methods of making. We will experiment with collage and appropriation though series of exercises.

We will look at what writing is and what it can be in the space of artist book; and how it performs as a a metaphor for interconnectedness and coherence of the book space. We will also consider publishing communities and look at channels and methods of dissemination. The course is suitable for anyone keen to experiment with publishing as art practice.

Course Structure

The module will take place over six weeks, exploring the life of the artist book from conception to distribution. Each session will include time for reviewing new material, viewing examples of artist books from my collection, exploring a new skill or process, discussions, independent practice with support and feedback.

Week 1. Explore the notion of book and of the artist book though discussion, examples and practical exercises to create a variety of simple book forms. 

Week 2. Using my private collection of artist books as a starting point, explore (in practice) book structures and their relationship to ideas and artist practice.

Week 3. Language, poetry, words, narratives, fragments. Experiment with possibilities of text in the artist books inspired by the history of visual poetry of the 20th century.

Week 4. Focusing on image books (such as photobooks), explore images, collage, page space and the notion of margins within an altered book.

Week 5. Hybrid thinking and hybrid making. Combining digital and manual, individual and communal, material and performative making techniques.

Week 6. What happens next? Channels and methods of distribution, dissemination, circulation, exhibiting.

About the Tutor

Egidija Čiricaitė plays with and around language through (type)writing, publishing and academic research, creating nebulous worlds at the periphery of linguistic experience. Born in Kaunas, Lithuania, she is now based in London, pursuing an interdisciplinary PhD at the Slade and UCL Linguistics, London.
Egidija has widely exhibited her artist books and works on paper around the world. Her books are held at V&A Museum, Tate Special Collections, Yale Center for British Art, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Koninklijke Bibliotheek Den Haag, Bibliotheque Kandinsky-Centre Pompidou, and numerous other public and private collections.