Wednesday 15 June, 1pm, online
RSVP via Eventbrite

Graphic Negotiations is a series of online lunchtime talks with designers, exploring the role of design in creating artists’ books. The format and topic will vary – we wanted to give designers the opportunity to present their work in whichever way they wanted to. In some cases designers will be in conversation with artists they’ve collaborated with in the past, in others they’ll talk about their work and ideas more generally or present a visual portfolio.

This fourth event in the series features Rose Nordin, a designer we have worked with on several projects including as a designer on the best-selling Shy Radicals, and as co-author (as part of the OOMK collective) and designer of The Library Was. Most recently, Rose designed the forthcoming book by artist Rosa-Johan Uddoh, Practice Makes Perfect, and will be joined by Rosa at this event to discuss the collaborative process.

Francesco Pedraglio’s second book with Book Works, takes battles as a story-telling frame to focus on the small details and absurdities that characterise almost all of historical events and that end up changing the course of their action. Mixing into the historical stories, are personal accounts, trivial idiosyncratic events that become elevated to the same status as those that effect history.

Each story comes with a drawing, a ‘potential stage’ for re-enacting the battle. Each story, could be read as a script for a performance. Each performance could restage a battle, or simply a moment of everyday life that takes on in that moment the significance of a battle.

otherwise it would be too easy wouldn’t it?
talking about the present moment through the anecdotal
and instead no, it doesn’t work like that
while instead you can talk about the real, that’s possible, yes
or the real moment
which I keep on imagining as a glitch in one’s biography
exposing the secret mechanics governing anyone’s life
like, in the case of the incident I’d read in his book, the going out with a woman and
the losing track of time and
the ending up sleeping at hers and
the getting involved in her domestic dynamics just enough to lose a train
consequently ending up saving his own life…
and that’s what I was telling to this new acquaintance of mine, now a friend
while trying to explain to her what it was that I was doing with my writings
the whole real moment thing

Our June 2022 Book of the Month, with 30% off, is Falling Into Place by Heather Peak and Ivan Morison (2009)

Continuing their explorations and investigations into cultures of self-sufficiency, Falling into Place brings many elements of the artists’ research together with sketches and drawings, through a narrative which is part-science fiction, part-history, part-autobiography and part-fairytale.

Co-published by Book Works and Situations, University of the West of England, Bristol, Falling Into Place was the eighth title in Fabrications, a series of co-publishing partnerships initiated by Book Works and edited by Gerrie van Noord.