AMBruno
Red

AMBruno's new book project for 2015 was on the theme of Red, exploring red in manifold ways, with fifteen books by fifteen artists.The collection was selected by Elizabeth James, Senior Librarian, NAL Collections, from initial proposals.

The Red artists are: Karen Blake, Kathryn Faulkner, Judy Goldhill, Barbara Greene, Rachael Hand, Danqing Huang, Saemi Jeon, Julie Johnstone, Katarina Kelsey, Sharon Kivland, Philip Lee, Sophie Loss, John McDowall, Peter Rapp, and Altea Grau Vidal.

The Red collection was first shown at the International Contemporary Artists' Book Fair, Leeds at the Tetley (6th to 8th March 2015) :

Bristol Artists Book Event (BABE), Arnolfini, Bristol (11th to 12th April 2015).

The London Art Book Fair, Whitechapel Gallery (10th to 13th September 2015).

Counter (Plymouth Art Book Fair), KARST, Plymouth (23rd to 24th October 2015). Marco Calí from AMBruno presented a performance lecture entitled Narrative and the Brain.

Small Publishers Fair, Conway Hall, London (6th to 7th November 2015).

Karen Blake - Red Lines
Lines must be drawn.
And they can be set in stone.
Red lines are lines of limit.

Kathryn Faulkner - no safe light on A series of test strips systematically explore how many reds can be generated in a colour darkroom.
Each strip demonstrates what happens when the Cyan, Magenta and Yellow filters are activated by incremental exposure.

Judy Goldhill - Sanguine Shifts This photo-book pictures encounters with this dangerous colour set loose in the field of this photographer's vision. On the changing coloured ground there are enumerations from the lived and living world: lava flows; startling earth from Rwanda; the caped leather seat of a Havana taxi; and a bubbling sulphur-rich caldera from Chile.

Barbara Greene - Making Red: Rubia Tinctorum Rubia Tinctorum is the Latin name for the plant known as Dyer's Madder. Of enormous significance this plant can produce colours in a large range of reds, oranges and browns. The book references the history and uses of this plant, from textiles found in the Pyramids to modern aniline dyes.

Rachael Hand - B Should be Scarlet A playful look at the world through someone else's eyes.

Danqing Huang - IN/OUT In The Chinese language 'to turn red' connotes the sense of being/becoming trendy. This book uses the concept of Yin and Yang, in an attempt to demonstrate how trends can be understood through turning the pages.

Saemi Jeon - The red room is the reinterpretation of a novel The Red Room by August Strindberg. The Red Room describes hypocrisy through the eyes of characters such as a journalist, philosopher, painter and actor. A chapter six titled 'the red room' represents the reason why this is called The Red Room and why the room is important for them.

Julie Johnstone - Red How can red hide? An exercise examining perception, deception, shape-shifting, and the elusive reliability of the human eye.

Katarina Kelsey - Antigone notes Looking at Hölderlin's translation of Antigone, this book focuses on his disruptive translation of what is usually translated as bad or troubling news to 'red word'. Red, on the cusp of all to happen in Antigone, is realized through the book in Hölderlin's fragments, as shards and catastrophe.

Sharon Kivland - MES MARIANNES The Parisian sans-culottes displayed their revolutionary ardour and plebeian solidarity in 1789 by wearing the Phrygian cap, the bonnet rouge. Herein there are only women, Mariannes who are all bonnet, who are nothing but phallic silhouettes, which oscillate between difference and equality.

Philip Lee - Peacock Peacock is a concertina book of 14 red pigmented-ink drawings of the artist's cock, from at rest to erect.
In the state of erection, the penis is the reddest part of a man's body. Animating the movement, the red in the drawings also represents the blood engorging and reddening of the penis during excitation.

Sophie Loss - Death and life. You look but I know. Dead birds do not leave traces. The cherries and redcurrants live forever - they stain, transfer and mark this present. You are holding the closed book, go on open it, and take in what you have caused but not yet witnessed. Based on still-life painting by Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1712) and possible seepage from it - an encounter of verso and recto pages.

John McDowall - Rubric The placing of the 'a', indefinite article and first letter of alphabet, in parenthesis simultaneously highlights and displaces it. There is a shifting ambiguity of assimilation between the signifier of colour and reflexively that of the act of reading in the present and, a homonym, in the past.

Peter Rapp - The Communist Manifesto The Communist Manifesto is one of the most iconic political tracts in modern history. It is presented here in the manner of an illuminated manuscript for the twenty first century.

Altea Grau Vidal - Red Under Black & White Red is the colour of the experience, the colour of the incisions. The incisions left by words, dots, commas, lines, the marks of the musical language. All signs that module the time and the breath and leave a hint, a resonance, an echo traced in red.