By Eva Isherwood-Wallace, PhD Placement Student with Contemporary British & Irish Published Collection.
As a part of the British Library PhD placement scheme, I spent three months investigating small writer festivals throughout the UK and Ireland to assist assortment growth for artists’ books and fantastic press. This placement was primarily based within the Contemporary British and Irish division, underneath the supervision of curator Jerry Jenkins. Small writer festivals are held all around the UK and Ireland, showcasing the work of artists and small presses that produce handmade and limited-edition books. Curatorial workers from establishments just like the British Library repeatedly attend these occasions to accumulate new publications for his or her collections and to develop their relationships with particular person artists and presses.
What can the British Library study from these guide festivals? By evaluating lists of exhibitors to the British Library’s holdings, we are able to see whose work is being collected and the place they’re primarily based. This is especially essential when assessing the regional range of the gathering. During my placement, I had the chance to attend a couple of of those guide festivals. My first go to was to the Small Publishers Fair in October 2022. Around 60 artists and publishers from the world over collect to share their work every year at Conway Hall in Bloomsbury. The corridor was packed, stuffed with artists, printmakers, publishers, editors, librarians, curators, collectors, college students and members of the general public. These festivals are an ideal alternative to find distinctive publications from all kinds of locations. I left with a bag stuffed with as a lot as I might carry house with me, together with a pamphlet from a Yorkshire-based printmaker, Irish writing from Aberdeen and a French novel printed in London.
Image by Eva Isherwood-Wallace
As nicely as seeing all of those fascinating books and assembly the artists and presses behind them, attending the honest allowed me to do some in-person detective work. With my listing of exhibitors, I made my approach across the busy room to work out which exhibitors had been related to the location mission. For my functions, ‘relevant’ meant artists and presses primarily based inside the UK and Ireland who produce work in editions quite than distinctive artworks. This signifies that every particular person work has a number of copies (e.g. in an version of fifty) as a result of one-off items are thought-about manuscripts, a class dealt with by a distinct division. Exploring the honest on this approach took many of the afternoon, largely as a result of I needed to cease to look at each guide on each desk!
Before my go to, there have been a couple of questions I notably needed to seek out the solutions to. Do on-line festivals enable for wider regional illustration? Did a few of the modifications made due to the Covid-19 pandemic really profit artists and presses primarily based outdoors of London? We may anticipate to see an enormous shift within the places of exhibitors when a good is held on-line. However, the info I collected throughout my analysis means that the story is extra sophisticated.
Image by Eva Isherwood-Wallace
More Scottish presses participated within the on-line Small Publishers Fair in 2021 than in individual in 2022. However, practically all of those presses had already travelled to the Small Publishers Fair earlier than the pandemic. Only one Scottish press, Stichill Marigold, exhibited on the Small Publishers Fair for the primary time when it was held on-line. This was additionally the case for artists and presses primarily based in Wales and the Republic of Ireland. This factors in the direction of the close-knit nature of this publishing neighborhood, with exhibitors returning 12 months after 12 months to the identical festivals. For artists and presses on this business, on-line provision doesn’t essentially equal accessibility. This may be partially defined by the issue in precisely representing work of this sort on a display screen.
The work of those artists and presses is tactile and materials. The making of artists’ books and fantastic press editions entails conventional strategies and tools, with some publishers like Distillers Press in Dublin utilizing printing presses which can be over a century outdated. Artists’ books additionally act as bodily paperwork of expertise. Some current works have been produced in a ‘lockdown diary’ format, which supplies artists with a strategy to report their experiences of the pandemic. By buying these works for the gathering, the British Library can safely archive them and make them obtainable to readers who wouldn’t have in any other case been in a position to see them.
Image by Eva Isherwood-Wallace
One instance of the ‘lockdown diary’ artist’s guide is Setting by Helen Douglas of Weproductions, a press primarily based at Deuchar Mill within the Scottish Borders. Attending these festivals opens up the potential of face-to-face encounters between collectors, curators and artists from throughout the UK and Ireland. We had been in a position to meet with Helen Douglas and see her newest works, and this additionally gave me the prospect to watch a British Library acquisition within the wild. The worth of those festivals as assembly locations underlines their significance to the British Library’s accumulating practices.
From the info I collected throughout this go to, I used to be in a position to develop my understanding of the British Library’s relationship with small writer festivals. By evaluating the listing of artists and presses on the Small Publishers Fair 2022 with the British Library’s holdings, I discovered that 70% of those exhibitors may be discovered within the Library’s assortment. In distinction, 29% of exhibitors at one other main honest—Bristol Artist’s Book Event 2022—are represented within the assortment. In getting ready my ultimate report on the finish of my placement, I thought of how the British Library can develop its accumulating methods to make sure that the gathering is inclusive of artists and publishers throughout the UK and Ireland.
It is, nevertheless, essential to keep in mind that this information doesn’t essentially have a easy rationalization. While the comparability between the Small Publishers Fair at Conway Hall and the Bristol Artist’s Book Event may recommend a skewed regional illustration primarily based on proximity to London, there are different components at play. With 42% included within the British Library assortment, extra exhibitors at Dublin Art Book Fair 2022 are represented than these in Bristol. Nevertheless, these small writer festivals are key to figuring out areas which can be underrepresented within the assortment. By guaranteeing that the British Library has a presence at small writer festivals all through the UK and Ireland, curators will be capable to purchase a various vary of thrilling new works for readers to find.