Sarah Bodman, Research Fellow - Artists' Books
Centre for Fine Print Research
University of West England, Bristol
School of Art, Media and Design
Kennel Lodge Road
Bristol, BS3 2JT, United Kingdom
Telephone: +44 (0)117 32 84747
Fax: +44 (0)117 32 84824
Web: www.uwe.ac.uk/amd/cfpr
Email: Sarah.Bodman@uwe.ac.uk
Exhibition and Portfolio Project: “Bookmarks III: Infiltrating Kontakt, 2005”
Bookmarks: Infiltrating the Library System (Parts I and II, 2004-5) was initially a two-part project to encourage a wider appreciation of artwork in the book format and to engage with members of the public at libraries and at artist’s book venues. Over 50 contributing artists have produced more than 5000 bookmarks since the project started in 2004. The infiltration has produced some great exchanges between the artists and the public through some of these subversive bookmarks escaping into the outside world.
Bookmarks III will run the project for the last time and will include new bookmark distribution displays at Impact Kontakt in Berlin and Poznan. Series I and II have already been installed in over 20 venues around the world including the USA, Canada, Italy, Brazil, Australia and Korea They have been dispatched to libraries, bookshops and galleries for the public to help themselves from the distribution boxes. Bookmarks III will also be exhibited at Purdue University, USA in 2006, and Moufflon Bookshop, Nicosia, Cyprus, in 2005.
Contributors from around the world, who usually work in the format of the artist’s book, each produce an edition of 100 bookmarks for distribution. These cover a range of: hand printed, old and new technologies, typed, sewn, drawn, photographed or folded paper-works. The Bookmarks are collated into sets including a selection for each artist as thanks for their participation, a set for our archives and the rest divided into distribution boxes for each of the venues. Each of the Bookmarks is stamped with a link to our Bookmarks III website where visitors can view the galleries of Bookmark images from all three series and contact any of the contributors (www.cfpr.uwe.ac.uk/bkmks/).
SARAH BODMAN is a Research Fellow for Artists' Books at the CFPR, UWE, Bristol, UK. She has curated and led many research projects including: Books by Artists (1999) a survey exhibition of 111 British Artists’ Books; A Tale of Two Cities (2001) an exchange exhibition of artists' books between 20 artists in Bristol and New York; and a web-based project: “The History Book That Never Was” (2003) with 27 artists for the SGC Conference in Boston, USA. Bodman has recently curated an exhibition of 112 artists’ books incorporating nature and the landscape: Arcadia id est which launched in March 2005 at TRACE gallery, Dorset before touring Europe, Australia and the USA until 2007. Recent projects include an AHRB funded survey Marketing and Creating Artists’ Books and a touring exhibition Librarians Artists’ Books in June 2005 with 46 contributing curators, librarians and writers. Bodman is also editor of the Artist’s Book Yearbook a bi-annual publication on contemporary book arts, the new 2005-7 issue, published this September. Sarah Bodman has also written Creating Artists’ Books published in 2005 by A&C Black, London (also published in the USA by Watson-Guptill). Bodman’s own artists’ books include Time Itself based on the Jenner Museum, Berkeley, Gloucestershire, in 2002 and The Marsh Test made during a residency at VSW, Rochester, New York in 2002. Some recent works include: Pace Bend inspired by the film Dead Calm - translated into a cliff walk near Austin, Texas; Flowers in Hotel Rooms inspired by Richard Brautigan’s novel The Abortion and Viola the story of a woman who let nothing get in the way of her passion for baking. Her books are also included in many international collections such as Tate Britain, the British Library and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Yale Centre for British Art and MOMA, USA.