AMBruno
One-Fold Books

At its most basic, a book consists of a folio - a sheet of paper once folded.

Following a project brief by John McDowall, AMBruno presented work made in this simple essential form: a single sheet of paper or card with one fold, resulting in what might be read as either four consecutive pages or as a cover, two interior facing pages and a back cover.

Content such as image/text may, for instance, be on or materially incorporated in one or more of these pages. The books witness a fascinating diversity of responses to this formal constraint, with a wide range of conceptual, material and structural approaches.

The one-fold books were shown at the 15th International Contemporary Artists' Book Fair, University of Leeds (9 to 10 March 2012).

A selection of the one-fold-books - by Marco Calí, Claire Deniau, Jane Grisewood, Ingrid Jensen, Sophie Loss, John McDowall, Steve Perfect, and Cally Trench - was shown in At Play 2012 at the New Ashgate Gallery, Farnham (curated by Cally Trench and Dr Outi Remes), 8 June to 21 July 2012.

All the one-fold books were shown in Publish and be damned at the ICA, London (2 March 2013).

AMBruno presented one-fold books by twenty artists:

Karen Blake - Book of folds tells its own story. It maps the events of its own making through notation, marks, and material, and reveals the potential for an infinite series. Embossed print. Edition of 20.

Marco Calí - Romantic Novel Opening a novel is (usually) the mechanical process of coming between two characters as they long for each other. Only when you close the book do the two come together again. Edition of 50. Giclée print.

Sara Dell'Onze - All you need ... is a book that explores the nature of the visual, its meaning and their complex dependency on each other.

Claire Deniau - Open and look at the left-hand page A thought on the gesture/ritual of choosing, holding and reading a book. Open edition.

Kathryn Faulkner - One Fold Object to be photographed by a pinhole camera. Edition of 5. Paper, fishing line, fishing weights, pencil, piercing.

Judy Goldhill - Revenant A negative bag, half full of the film it has always contained; folded and left with only the chemical residue of the processing deposited on the enclosing paper - a trace of what it once held. The stored negatives are variations of an art directed group of corporate businessmen, photographed in the early 1980's. Then supermen; now with their magnitude eroded, they have faded from negative presences to waning ghosts, revenants from that age of financial exuberance.

Barbara Greene - Proof Science depends on high level leaps of imagination and creativity. One such example is that of hypothesis and consequent demonstration of the existence of black holes. Edition of 10. Screenprint on Somerset paper.

Ingrid Jensen - Diary 2011/12 Squashed, desperate, but still alive! Series of monoprints. Ink and acrylic on paper.
Edition of 25.

Sharon Kivland - Ma Nana It is uncertain if this is a book or a drawing, as uncertain a thing as Nana a person. Edition of 3. Pencil on Canson paper.

Heidi Locher - Let there be light First day: Light is commanded to appear ('Let there be light!') [Gen 1:3.] The light is divided from the darkness, and they are named day and night.

Sophie Loss - Nut; Off; Fly Notes of joy on having constraints to work against/with, or let me loose on a giant canvas stretched between cerebration and where the discus falls. Open edition. Digital print.

John McDowall - Reflects
On the turn of a page.
Open edition. Digital print.

Valérie Mary - Infancy Edition of 10.

Maureen O'Brien - Street A one-fold book which uses the four sides to evoke a sense of the street, its composition, atmosphere and textures. Edition of 6.

Verónica Pérez Karleson - For 30 years I have been trying to wear this Inkjet printout. Variable size.

Steve Perfect - No return A walk in the city, a walk in your hands.

Cally Trench - Start and End Paper Marbled end-papers were often found in pre-20th century books; this one-fold book consists only of 'marbling', front and back.