AMBruno
words

AMBruno's new book project for 2016 was words, with sixteen books by seventeen artists, selected by Maria White. The books were produced in response to the brief set by John McDowall:

words: this may be a consideration of any aspect of the materiality of written language and of its relation to the space of the page and the space of the book.

The words artists are: Luke Allan, Egidija Čiricaitė, Judy Goldhill, Jane Grisewood, Ximena Pérez Grobet, Katarina Kelsey, Sharon Kivland, Philip Lee, Sophie Loss & John McDowall, Julien Nédélec, Steve Perfect, Anne Rook, Colin Sackett, Aymee Smith, Rachel Smith, and Erica Van Horn.

The words books were first shown at the 19th International Contemporary Artists' Book Fair, at The Tetley, Leeds (5th to 6th March 2016)

A selection of books from the words collection was also shown as part of the Poetry Library Open Day on 16th October 2016. This is a annual event held on the top floor of the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London. Pascal O'Loughlin organised this thoughtful event and Katarina Kelsey curated our books.

The Poetry Library introduced AMBruno's words collection with the following quotation:

Artists' books transform the condition of bookness, and complicate it. In almost every case, attention to the book's visual presence - its objectness - is pronounced, in a manner that embraces elements from painting, sculpture, collage and filmic techniques. Some [...] are made for reading; some for looking; some for touching; many for all three. In content, they range from political statements, to formal meditations, to personal fantasies; they are also visually wild, inscrutable and weird. Holland Cotter (Introduction) in The Century of Artists' Books (Joanne Drucker, 2004)

The words collection was also shown at the Small Publishers Fair, an annual celebration of books by contemporary artists, poets, writers and book designers, held in Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London on Friday 4th and Saturday 5th November 2016, 11am to 7pm. Thanks to all the invigilators: Katarina Kelsey, Steve Perfect, Philip Lee, Egidija Čiricaitė, Ximena Pérez Grobet, John McDowall and Sophie Loss.

Luke Allan - one-word poems: for Vala A set of five booklets, each bearing a one-word poem. With the titles on the covers and poems inside, the turning of the pages gives tempo to the unfolding of the text. The poems are a touch cryptic, even resistant, but they are equally playful, inviting, amatory, tender.

Egidija Čiricaitė - MUG CUP KNIFE LADLE MUG CUP KNIFE LADLE explores transition from the fluidity of thought to the fixity of the written text. The book follows a path of thinking from the initial visual trigger to a composed poem, using a set of rules which imitate creative process; each new page only contains the words used previously or their collocates within four positions.

Judy Goldhill - Carbon Copy My cousin recently handed me a folder of documents containing typed and written fragments of my father's life. They make up a time line, moving from father to daughter, composed of various words photographed from these papers; copies of copies, all sequenced through the reproduction of language, media and meaning.

Jane Grisewood - Repetition & Recollection... This book was inspired by Søren Kierkegaard's dialectic in his work Repetition. Tactile words flow in opposite directions echoing the back-and-forth play between repetition in constant forward motion, and recollection confined to the past. Or is repetition bringing the past into the present, and recollection connecting the past to the future? Paradox remains...

Ximena Pérez Grobet - WORDS: The house was quiet and the world was calm Words are not only letters, their order and their space are as important to make words possible. The book shows this idea by setting all of each of the different letters of the poem on a separate page in order to appreciate the space they occupy in the word and on the page. The poem refers with its own words to the importance of this concept.

Katarina Kelsey - Sprachgeist Sprachgeist is language's ghost, the ghost's power naming language. Sentences (chiastic) will be erased using oily hands. None are mine. Words, taken, really are poltergeists.

Sharon Kivland - LALANGUE Lalangue is a report of language without words, where words are replaced by images, and mouths are blocked. To be a body is to be woven from language. The body of the speaking being is imprisoned and determined by the signifiers of maternal speech.

Philip Lee - Body For Words In Body For Words, Philip Lee has replaced with a photograph of his naked body, the spaces occupied by the text on the 'front matter' pages of The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form by Kenneth Clark. The blocks, previously taken up by written text, are now the parts of an image of the flawed naked body of an actual man in his fifties.

Sophie Loss & John McDowall - Escapade François Rabelais enjoyed words, they romp along together with his larger than life characters, and in this little book these words of words veer off the allotted path, to the ends of their world of paper, and back.

Julien Nédélec - False friends/Faux amis Please, be comprehensive about my English mistakes. Edition of 12. Digital print, 16 pages, stapled.

Steve Perfect - Shunt The text of the book is to be read aloud so that the reader experiences the texture of words in the mouth. Photographs often seem to be a window on the world but in the book dust and increasing magnification cause surface texture to take precedence over content.

Anne Rook - The other Words The other Words is a book about annotations I made while reading Marcel Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu over a period of 16 months, marks that often defaced the printed page or obscured the text. These notes have been collected in a scrapbook, a record of reading.

Colin Sackett - reset reset esetr setre etres trese

Aymee Smith - Let's Start a Brand New Story, Now, An alphabetisation of the words from every song written by the Bee Gees sits either side of views expressed within Plato's Republic, wherein the artist is described as one who knowingly misrepresents the world and its objects, especially through the use of words. The Bee Gees respond to this claim.

Rachel Smith - Reading Words Reading Words is a material exploration of the thinking and distractions that occur simultaneously whilst reading. Rachel Smith takes Jean-Paul Sartre's book Words as reading material and interrupts the flow of the narrative with thoughts and distractions which respond to fragments of the original text.

Erica Van Horn - ABOVE These words explore local vernacular speech. As I listen I isolate words in order to establish meaning. Listening becomes translation from a spoken language new to me into written explanation. A word can be a thing already known or it can be something altogether different.