This is an extract from Twenty-Nine Thousand Nights: A Communist Life By Nan Berger, by Ruth Ewan. It recounts Nan Berger’s experience selling copies of the Daily Worker on the Silver Jubilee of George V, and a banner drop along the procession. The authorised banner read “LONG MAY THEY REIGN”, but it was altered it … Continued
Gay’s the Word and Book Works present the London launch of Dark Room: San Francisco Sex and Protest, 1988-2003 by Phyllis Christopher. Phyllis Christopher will be in conversation with Brooke Palmieri at Gay’s the Word on Thursday 9th June. Doors open at 7pm and the event will start shortly afterwards. This is a free event … Continued
Join us online on Wednesday 18 May at 1pm for the third in our Graphic Negotiations series of events exploring designing artists’ books (RSVP). This third event in the series features Erik Hartin and Moa Pårup, who we have a long history of collaboration with, both as a duo and separately. As designers, they have … Continued
We’re very excited to be back in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall at the weekend for Offprint London, the annual fair for experimental and independent arts publishers. On Saturday 14th May, 2.30pm, Phyllis Christopher will be giving a talk in the MacAulay Studio about her new book Dark Room (no booking necessary), and she’ll be … Continued
Our Book of the Month for May is Twenty–Nine Thousand Nights: A Communist Life by Nan Berger, a project by Ruth Ewan (2017). Commissioned for Beyond Words, Ruth Ewan unearthed an unpublished manuscript of Nan Berger (1914–1998) – international activist, writer and editor, and lifelong member of the Communist Party. Now a forgotten figure she gained … Continued
Join us online on 28 April, 1pm for the second in our Graphic Negotiations series of events, this time with Rosen Eveleigh (RSVP).
Rosen Eveleigh is a designer and researcher working independently or with artists, archives, editors, cultural institutions and publishers to produce graphic identities, typefaces, websites, texts, lectures, books and other works.
A new eight-week bookbinding class run by the Book Works Studio begins on 9th May and places are still available.
Taught by Ina Baumeister, students will have the opportunity to learn hand bookbinding techniques which can later be applied to their own work. The course will feature multi-section binding, exposed spine books, Japanese style binding and a concertina binding. The final two weeks will include making a slipcase
Our Book of the Month for April is Sharon Kivland’s A Case of Hysteria (1999), which draws on Freud’s famous analysis of Dora, a young woman who is brought to him by her father. Dora is suffering from repeated loss of voice and a nervous cough. Sharon Kivland has created a mystery novel about Dora, which investigates the events discussed in her analysis as clues to the unlocking of a story of love and betrayal.
Radio Ballads is the culmination of a three-year series of collaborative commissions exploring stories about labour and who cares for whom, and in what way. Over the past three years, Helen Cammock, Sonia Boyce, Rory Pilgrim and Ilona Sagar have collaborated with social workers, carers, organisers, and communities. Four films and bodies of research have emerged from these long-term artistic processes. The work will show simultaneously from tomorrow at the Serpentine Gallery and the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham…
A new event series exploring the role of designers in creating artists’ books. Book Works sees graphic design as crucial to realising artists and writers’ ideas in the final form of the book. While conventionally designers often become involved in the later stages of a book’s production, and with a limited brief, we involve the … Continued