ABC

Intro

Here’s my application to join ABC, the Artist’s Book Cooperative, that I expect to fail. The rest of this post answers their application to join questions.

Why?

There’s a lot of stuff I can pick up from you guys, quite a lot of which will involve printers and technique. ABC’s presence in Luxembourg, a slightly under–massive country with a grand population of roughly 1/15th of London’s will offer little benefit for you guys I suspect—EXCEPT there is an annual international book / publisher’s fair, and I think me taking a place & so giving you a presence could be very useful for all of us.

My work?

It’s mostly abstract stuff, photographs that went so mouldy they scared the scanner into making them look better than the original, photographs that torment reality, that kind of thing. Some are very dirty: I use dirt and mess to contradict the mad cleanliness of digitisation; reality is yukky and so, to some extent, is my work. On one level, I want to make it clear that no matter how abstract, my photos are photos. That, & I hate hoovers. Plus there’s poetry.

CV

I’ve got 5 artist’s photo books, two printed by a mate’s mate who annoyingly went bust, three coming soon via lulu. I run a small poetry press, corrupt press. I’ve got 5 poetry collections out too, with another on its way: two are joint poetry / photography—my poetry’s not published by my press.

I exhibit regularly here in Luxembourg; I usually cover my costs and earn some beer money. Lux is extremely rich and likes its arts, I earn beer. I’m expanding that activity, and intend to cross borders. To be honest, it’s nothing exotic.

I’ve a humungous self–coded web site with 28+G of original material.

Oh, er: Brit, old, fat, hairy.

Books

Here are my books. You can download (low resolution) copies of the artist’s books, If you want copies of the poetry collections, I’ll have to snail them to you (they’re not published by me). I’m happy to do so: I’d want to see what’s what if I were in your position.

PS

I’m not really expecting to get into ABC, I think my direction is different to yours, but I’d love a conversation about good cheap printers, how to get quality critical feedback without hitting the critic, getting the best print on the page, etc..