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One and many pages

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AMBruno's new book project for 2020 was One and many pages, with eleven books by twelve artists.

One and many pages poster

The brief sent out in the call for proposals consisted of the photograph below and its title. Artists were invited to respond to the image, the photograph's represented subject, and the accompanying phrase.

Project brief - <i>One and many pages

Project brief - One and many pages

Clive Phillpot made a selection from the (anonymised) submissions. In 2020, a time of the one of isolation and of the many in the appreciation of community, twelve artists worked on their books. Their approaches to the given subject were thought-provoking and varied, with interpretations ranging from the formal to the metaphoric. Some highlighted the materiality of the page and of the book, or that of a printed depiction of pages and of the concatenation of leaves. Others took One and many and page in a more allusive way, with the works' genesis coming from current events, literary and visual art sources, and ornithology.

The One and many pages artists are: Mette-Sofie Ambeck, Judy Goldhill, Susan Johanknecht & Katharine Meynell, Pauline Lamont-Fisher, Sophie Loss, John McDowall, Caroline Penn, Ximena Pérez Grobet, Sumi Perera, Peter Rapp, and Cally Trench.

The full set of eleven One and many pages books was bought by the British Library, and also by the Library of the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore for their Special Collections.

Please see the AMBruno Shop Window if you might be interested in buying a book from the collection.

One and many pages was at Printed Matter's Virtual Art Book Fair (PMVABF), 24th-28th February 2021, based in New York. AMBruno's website within the virtual fair included photographs and very short films about each book.

The eleven One and many pages books were shown in December 2021 in London at a very private view for the artists, along with the Volume books. This was a small scale and yet wonderful event appropriate to the times. It was great to handle books, look at other peoples' work and talk.


Home use ONLY  - Mette-Sofie Ambeck

Mette-Sofie Ambeck - Home use ONLY

Mette-Sofie Ambeck - Home use ONLY

A white, featureless book, without information on the cover or spine, the book becomes anonymous as to its contents. What may it hide? - Is it images or text? - Will the reader be surprised, disappointed, confused? The pandemic is similarly mysterious; specifics are vague, symptoms shifting. The carrier is within the greater crowd, within the covers of society. Contact carries risk, but bears results; in bending the fore-edge language is revealed. This builds to legibility from abstract printed shapes now visible inside page surfaces. Deeper handling - flicking through - reveals the iconic virus structure, drifting discretely in print and cut-out on the pages. Appearing out of the spine to again disappear - as we hope it will.

Soft cover, 150 pages, printed and perfect bound on demand by Blurb.co.uk, hand-cut by artist. Mohawk Fine Papers - Proline Uncoated, 148gsm, archival-quality with eggshell textured finish. Edition of 19. £128

Equivalents   - Judy Goldhill

Judy Goldhill - Equivalents

Judy Goldhill - Equivalents

The title of Equivalents is also that of a remarkable series of cloud photographs taken by Alfred Stieglitz from 1925 to 1934. His series was initially called Songs of the Sky, and merged his differing emotions with the abstract qualities of the clouds. Shot throughout the night in the strange spring of 2020, my photographs include slivers of trees and a house. They hold the vastness of the night sky in relative perspective against the scale of the moving earth, from inky black to the coming of the dawn.

Section sewn with black thread, 44 pages case bound in black bookcloth in black slipcase. Indigo printed on coated paper, foil blocked cover. 12 signed copies. £110

Enter [the Page as a] lady, - Susan Johanknecht & Katharine Meynell

Susan Johanknecht & Katharine Meynell - Enter [the Page as a] lady,

Susan Johanknecht & Katharine Meynell - Enter [the Page as a] lady,

Derived from various appearances and utterances of the minor Shakespearian role of Page, our use of text is sparse, almost incidental, removed from any specific context. Extending the pun of Page on [page]. We have retained the typographic conventions for the play. Printed in Garamond on a Vandercook SP15 during 2020 lockdown when theatres were 'dark' and movements curtailed, on off-cut papers from our plan-chests (Cyclus, Fabriano, Fabriano Watercolour, Maureen's unmarked, Rives BFK, unmarked lower drawer, Watman, Zenyu, Somerset).

One hundred pages in the present time, enter when birds do sing, exeunt all, hey ding a ding.

Octavo size, 100 pages (plus missing pages and errata), letterpress printed. Hand bound by Clare Bryan. 20 copies. Gefn Press and Boundary Street Press, London. £50

Single multiple  - Pauline Lamont-Fisher

Pauline Lamont-Fisher - Single multiple

Pauline Lamont-Fisher - Single multiple

The idea was to produce a book that has dimensions, images and words that relate to the project brief. This led to thoughts of irregular plurals in the English language and how they relate to books. Each open spread has a single word on the verso and the plural of that word on the recto. Words of interest were those that have no plural or that have an irregular plural. Behind each word, is an image that relates to that word, but not necessarily to a book. The images are of a subtle tint, reminiscent of a watermark.

Inkjet printed, case bound, an edition of 20. £20

Paper to a wood  - Sophie Loss

Sophie Loss - Paper to a wood

Sophie Loss - Paper to a wood

The book is comprised of two elements, one supporting the other. It may be held in one's hands, but very soon the two distinct parts and their implied interdependence suggest that the one, and then the other be stood upright.

Printed on one component is the photographic reproduction of the front and back of another sheet that has been cut through many times. Across the folds of the cover/column part is the text From paper to a wood through many cuts. Looking back, lingering there with Eco - this allusion to Umberto Eco (with in mind his Six Walks in the Fictional Woods) derives from the image's resemblance to a dense copse, and the passage into a place of the imagination.

In the originating image the texture of the fore-edge's surface hints at the many leaves that make it up - Paper to a wood evolves from a reverse notion, that it may be imagined that such a surface be cut repeatedly, and that it is this action that creates the hundreds of pages of the book.

Single sheet and folded cover, laser printed on 300gsm Canaletto Book and 270gsm Colorplan Harvest. Open edition. £10

Readings  - John McDowall

John McDowall - Readings

John McDowall - Readings

On the first printed page, in a short text, I describe (or read) the photograph and the book it depicts - its leaning mass, the texture of the fore-edge and the passages formed by the slightly open covers. On each of the subsequent seven inward folding recto pages is the same piece of writing translated into Dutch, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and three German versions, the following page carries the three dots of an ellipsis. The intimation is that the process of translation may be continued into a multitude of other languages, and that any translation is one of infinite possibilities of interpretation and variation - from one to many. The genesis of the book is in two images, in a formal association with Pieter Bruegel's The Tower of Babel, and from this to Albrecht Dürer's early woodcut title page illustration of St Jerome in his study.

Open edition, 10 single and double pages sewn stab binding under folded overlapped spine, letterpress and laser print on 115gsm and 175gsm Somerset Book White. 2020. £35

One and Many Pages  - Caroline Penn

Caroline Penn - One and Many Pages

Caroline Penn - One and Many Pages

Copied repeatedly, the initial image of a book is photographed, printed as a page and again photographed ... until the book but not the page disappears.

With reference to the 1968 book, Xerox by Ian Burn, twenty-four double-page spreads reveal the progressive degradation and distortion of the image, as it switches from analog to digital, from print to page, and then back again. Each time it is copied and printed, the imperfections multiply until the background has become the foreground and the image is unrecognizable. In addition, each copy of each double-page spread is superimposed on the previous version, progressively building up the appearance of the open pages of a book. This is a book made out of the image of a book.

Concertina within a single folded cover, 24 double-page spreads. Digitally printed on Canaletto 125gsm and with embossed letterpress title. £25

Around the Corner - Ximena Pérez Grobet

Ximena Pérez Grobet - Around the Corner

Ximena Pérez Grobet - Around the Corner

The image of pages used in this project goes around the format of the book without respecting the limits of the page, what you see is what you read. Even though the image is a fore edge of a book concentrating in the group of pages, one and many pages, the sequence of these pages invades the space of the format as a whole. The image of the fore edge is in the fore edge of the book. The only part where you can see the whole image is the fore edge of this book. Every page has a little segment of the whole image, so the play of the title with the format also plays with the sequence of reading the image and the format as space at the same time.

Japanese binding, digital printing, in an edition of 20 copies. Nowhereman Press. £130

SECESSION: Inside Out-Outside In [IO-OI]  - Sumi Perera

Sumi Perera - SECESSION: Inside Out-Outside In [IO-OI]

Sumi Perera - SECESSION: Inside Out-Outside In [IO-OI]

This artist book illustrates the alternate positions between a book left partially open vertically upright (as shown in the brief), and a book that is placed flat, open fully at one double-spread. The pages are a series of photographs, that I took at the SECESSION BUILDING in Vienna, of the conceptual artist Peter Downsbrough's artist book titled: IN/OUT. I stood hovered over his splayed book trapped INside a glass box, trying to capture the reflection of an overhead ceiling neon tube light on the OUTside, as it traversed across the double spread from left to right, dependent on where I stood & by changing the angle of the camera. Thus I created MANY photo-pages to form a new book, from a single subject of ONE double-spread of another book. A detachable spine allows the 'codex'-like format (to be read by ONE reader) to convert to a 'concertina/leporello' (read by many).

Adhesive binding, digital printing, 14 pages + 2 endpapers. Edition of 30. £30

The Exorcist's Handbook  - Peter Rapp

Peter Rapp - The Exorcist's Handbook

Peter Rapp - The Exorcist's Handbook

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus encounters a man possessed by demons. When Jesus asks the demon his name, he says, "My name is Legion, for we are many". He begs Jesus to send them into a herd of nearby pigs. When the demons are sent into the herd, the pigs rush down the hill, jump into the sea and drown.

Two etchings printed on either side of a sheet of Fabriano Rosaspina Bianco paper with a rigid sleeve covered in bookcloth, and a magnetic fastening. Edition 20. £90

Book-Wing  - Cally Trench

Cally Trench - Book-Wing

Cally Trench - Book-Wing

A bird's wing is one thing made up of many feathers, just as a book is one thing made up of many pages. But while all the pages of a book are (usually) the same shape and size, the feathers that make up a bird's wing are shaped according to their function. In this book, each feather is different, an individual ink drawing. The book is constructed so that it can be read like a book or flapped like a wing. It exists in two forms - a right-handed and a left-handed form. If a reader holds both, will it give an illusion of flight?

Printed ink on watercolour paper, bound with glue and machine stitching. Edition of 12: six left-hand copies and six right-hand copies. Presented in an A3 black archival box. £55

One and many pages
at a very private view, London 2021

One and many pages at a very private view, London 2021

Photographs: Judy Goldhill and Cally Trench

One and many pages at a very private view, London 2021

One and many pages at a very private view, London 2021

One and many pages at a very private view, London 2021

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