The Digital Art Gallery at the London South Bank University
103 Borough Road London SE10AA
(Elephant & Castle: 01 in the map)
T +44(0) 2078155418
roushp@lsbu.ac.uk

The Borough Road Gallery commissioned artist paula roush and her photobook students to develop new work in response to the exhibition “London’s Post War Art Scene: David Bomberg & The Borough Group.” Researching the teaching and learning environment that preceded them at the Borough Polytechnic “which was to become the centre of the most vanguard and adventurous art education in post-war Britain,” [1] the photobook group presents a selection of their publications inspired by the traces of the former art studios in Borough road and the University archives. Bomberg’s revolutionary teaching methods, informed by a search for the “spirit in the mass,” [2] that was keenly adapted by the Borough Group (1946-1951) as their modus operandis, precedes current practice-based approaches to art as research and comes alive in the new self-published works.

Bomberg’s early enthusiasm for self-publishing and his involvement with the performative aspects of modern culture was evident in his pamphlet-book Russian Ballet (1919) whose reinterpretation is part of the exhibition. Other publications in the exhibition explore ways to articulate the new urban and gendered subjectivities that emerged in the Borough Road group as a result of the artists’ involvement with the reconstruction of London.
Bringing side by side the Borough group’s artwork and the newly commissioned publications completes the circle that started with the radical educational approaches to modern art in post-war Borough Polytechnic and continue with contemporary discursive approaches to art in the University’s Arts & Media department.

Director Borough Road Gallery
Andrew Dewdney

Project leader photobook project
paula roush

Exhibition support team
Bradley Chippington, Amelia Frances Hallsworth

Participants
Jessa Acton, Emma Barker, Anthony Berry, Natahaniel Black-Platt, Bradley Chippington, Jasmin Chung, Abbie Rae Clark, Olivia Clifford, Alexander Hiroki Coles, Aaron David Coles, Safaa Elmaarouf, Sophie Gordon, Amelia Frances Hallsworth, Madeline Holbrook, Yavin Lemuel Jackson, Sanil Khistria, Zoe Macleay, Jessica Louise McHugh, Marc Newbey, Talabi Pitanga, Emily Rawls, Jonathan Reid, Michael Rickett, Lucinda Smart, Monika Spychalska, Bogdan Ioan Staiculescu, Hannan Jane Storey, Amy Talbot, Leah Tara Watts

[1] Dominika Buchowska, 2011, Teaching Art In Post-War Britain: The Case Of The Borough Group 1945-1953, Polish-AngloSaxon Studies volume 14-15, pp. 107-129

[2] For their third annual exhibition in 1949 at the Arcade Gallery (The Royal Arcade, Bond Street) the Borough Group printed this statement in the catalogue:
We have said that our search is towards the spirit in the mass.
Many people have asked us for a further definition.
Words cannot give it; the answer lies in the content of the painting.
That is our purpose.
Our interest lies more in the mass than in the parts;
More in movement than in the static;
More in the plastic than in the decorative.
Identical objects no longer yield the same experience.
Our awareness is both of sensation and direction.
C. Holden, History of the Borough Group, date of access: 6 Nov 2012, www.cliffholden.co.uk.

The Ed Show
To celebrate the 75th birthday of Ed Ruscha, ABC Artists’ Books Cooperative created the ABCED group project that revisits, appropriates and deviates from Ruscha’s original photobook works. At a critical moment of photographic art education in the UK, ABC presents The Ed Show and asks what can be gained from looking back into the self-publishing world of Ed Ruscha?

Exhibition: October 9th – 30th Fridays 2:00 – 6:00 pm
The Digital Art Gallery
London South Bank University
103 Borough Road London SE1 0AA

The exhibition is open on Fridays 2:00 – 6:00 pm and at other times by appointment (email: roushp@lsbu.ac.uk).

Visiting artists’ conversations: Tuesday 23rd October 6:00-9:30 pm
Let’s Talk about Ed: An evening of presentations by ABC visiting artists, free and open to the public.

6.00: Jonathan Lewis and Andreas Schmidt: ‘Without Ed’
A presentation of the Artists’ Books Cooperative ABCED group project dedicated to the 75th birthday of Ed Ruscha.

6.30: Paula Roush and Maria Lusitano: ‘Feminising Ed’
A discussion of Tested: vaio road test (2012), in the context of other feminist projects that approach historical artists’ books and documents by the use of archive and exhibition making.

7:00: Travis Shaffer: ‘ED is ‘merican (American)’
Travis Shaffer is a Professor of Photography in Lawrence, Kansas – a college town equidistant from Ed’s birth town of Omaha, Nebraska and his childhood home in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Via Skype, Shaffer will discuss his various projects addressing Ruscha’s artist books as quintessentially American works.

7:30: Julie Cook: ‘Ed and I’
Julie Cook reports on her years making art books and her serendipitous relationship with Ed Ruscha.

Dress code: California casual attire (sunglasses allowed)

The Photobook 2012 Visiting Artists Programme
This event is part of the Photobook Visiting Artists Programme, which features leading photographers and photobook artists who discuss emergent issues in photobook publishing. The exhibition and conversations are intended to address the artist’s book within a discourse of found image and archival book practice, and what these modes of appropriation and distribution mean for contemporary self-publishing.

Presented in cooperation with the Centre for Media and Culture Research and the Borough Road Gallery, the Visiting Artists Programme supports the BA & MA photography courses at LSBU, which has a specialist photobook module.

Greg hartley: Forty four thirty three

Forty four thirty three is a book based on 4’33″ by John Cage. It is a series of passive photographs taken once a minute for forty four minutes and thirty three seconds. With minimal interference from the photographer, the photographs echo the composition by Cage: minimal, ambient, passive. To watch FULL SCREEN and volume ON.

Daniella Fedele: A Step Into Other’s Photos

An interactive book in the shape of two related cubes, where Daniela  investigated personal archives of numerous people, and using the images they provided, re-enacted them.

As per your request, here are the slides I presented week 11, summarising assesment and submission of course work as well as few tips on paragraph writing and referencing. Good luck with your portfolio and research paper.

Book live! International symposium and related live events  at London South Bank University 8th – 9th June 2012
a collaboration between the Centre for Media and Cultural Research (CMCR) at LSBU and bookRoom Research Cluster at UCA Farnham.

The event will bring together theorists, researchers and practitioners to stimulate a dialogue across disciplines  on the ability of the book to keep up with digital culture and the emergence of new modes of writing, of photographing, of reading, or archiving and of disseminating ‘on the page’ work. The purpose of this conference is to examine the current ‘transforming’ and ‘expanding’ of the book rather than its virtual disintegration.

The conference will include international guest speakers from the broader world of publishing, photography and experimental writing as well as short presentations of book works and a series of live experimental and durational ‘readings’.
The two keynote speakers are Joan Fontcuberta (photographer, artist and all-round critic of contemporary culture from Barcelona) and Sharon Helgason Gallagher (founder and director of D.A.P and ARTBOOK in New York). There will be a performance of the full twelve hours of John Cage’s Empty Words (first published in1979 by Wesleyan University Press) by Sylvia Alexandra Schimag (Germany), coinciding with the release of the complete recording by Editions Wandelweiser.

CALL FOR PAPER AND PRESENTATION max 25 minutes
Call for papers, presentations, panels and ‘readings’ dealing with (but not limited to) the following themes and research questions;

- How has digital technology allowed the book to expand its boundaries, both in space and time?
- Innovative convergence of traditional craft skills and advanced technologies in the making, reading, archiving or disseminating of books.
- Interdisciplinary experiments that addresses the cultural translations between traditional skills and advanced technologies.
- Explorations that reconsider the contemporary or future role of the book socially, culturally, politically.
- Innovative or disastrous explorations and transgressions of ebook readers.
- What do we gain and lose with on screen ‘reading’?
- How is conventional publishing adapting to fast changing digital economy?
- What has become of collecting in our digital culture?
- What is knowledge now that computers can provide and keep everything?
- High culture versus digital culture

Beyond the conference we will be bringing together papers and other contributions as a publication in its own right; an interesting survey of current thinking and innovative practice informed by both the themes and the findings of the conference. Edited and designed by bookRoom press, and published by RGAP.

Deadline for abstracts: 13th february 5pm
Please send abstracts to Emmanuelle Waeckerle (ewaeckerle@ucreative.ac.uk)
Submissions from doctoral students and early-career postdoctoral researchers are encouraged, as well as submissions from non-academic publishers, collectors, artists, writers and thinkers.

Conference Co-Chairs
Richard Sawdon Smith
Emmanuelle Waeckerlé

DOWNLOAD PDF WITH FULL RATIONALE and SUBMISSION GUIDELINES (Book-live-call-for-papers)

The exhibition The Artist Book in Slovenia 1966-2010 has been reviewed by Lara Gonzalez for the November 2011 issue of the Book Arts Newsletter and the video-documents shown in the exhibition  are now on youtube: both the 60′s and 70s episode and the 80s to now, available for scholarly (and other) research.

David Itzcovitz @ ItzDave Media has shared his photo documentation of the exhibition:

Venue: Digital Art Gallery at the London South Bank University, 103 Borough Road, SE1 0AA, London, United Kingdom [01 on the map]

The exhibition continues until Friday 28th October
You can visit it: Thursdays and Fridays14:00-18:00

The artist book as a distinct medium in Slovenia is the subject of this exhibition organised by Tadej Pogačar/ The P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute.

• The artist book emerged in Slovenia with the OHO Group, in the context of the neo-avant-garde art scene of the 1960s, in an atmosphere permeated with social and political activism.
• It developed in the 1970s with the production of the Westeast anthologies. Compiled by Franci Zagoričnik, they included around 700 original works by artists from Eastern and Western Europe and Asia.
• The 1980s and early 1990s were marked by the production of fanzines from the alternative scene, which was particularly active in the larger cities of Ljubljana and Maribor.
• In the past decade, artist books in Slovenia have been characterized by the hybridization of different genres, original neo-conceptual approaches, and the use of electronic formats, such as CD ROMs and digital archives.

The project, curated by Tadej Pogačar will be presented in London as a gallery-based installation with a selection of artist books and a lecture about the artist book in Slovenia from 1966-2010.

The P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute is a non-profit-making institution that works in the area of contemporary art through programmes for production, education, and exchange. It is the leading independent producer and publisher of artist books in Slovenia. In 2007, it developed the Artist Book Seminar, which featured lectures, exhibitions, and workshops devoted to the topic. Since 2008, the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute has taken part in artist-book fairs in Paris, Berlin, Brussels, London, Ljubljana, and New York.

The exhibition and lecture are part of the photobook module, facilitated by paula roush in the Digital Photography programme at the London South Bank University.

Further information

• The P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute
• Tadej Pogačar
• The photobook module
•  BA (Hons) Digital Photography
• MA Digital Photography

The exhibition has received the financial support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana, Department of Culture

Three independently produced photobooks selected and presented  by jorg colberg of independent photobook blog and the conscientious blog.