Angie Butler
Angie Butler is an artist with a multi-disciplinary approach to making, working with artist’s books predominantly using letterpress printing as a means of production. She is a current PhD research student investigating the practice of letterpress printing within contemporary book arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research (CFPR) at The University of The West of England. Angie lectures, leads workshops and courses teaching into various CPD programmes, undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses, at universities and studios throughout the UK, and runs a one-year book arts course at Spike Print Studio, Bristol. |
Reading Between The Lines: Investigating letterpress printed artists’ books today
As our culture becomes increasingly industrialised and digitised, we live with an overwhelming abundance of production and virtual (visual and textual) information. Advancement in digital technology has changed the way that we read books, becoming accustomed to gaining information from contents held beneath the screen. Accessibility and production of e-books, print-on-demand and digital printing continues to enable the artist’s book to push the boundaries of its definition, widening the field of practitioners and discourse.
Simultaneously, in direct response to digitisation, a human need to engage with methods that bring us back to our physical selves has also incited a parallel resurgence in traditional hands-on processes, placing a higher value on skill, making and the reflexive creative process. Recent exhibitions (such as Fine and Dirty: Contemporary Letterpress Art 2012/13) position craft skills and tacit knowledge of the book in a symbiotic relationship with digital media and the global social network.
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The particularities and aesthetics of letterpress printing, and the container, form and structure of the artist’s book are specific for each project and every practitioner. However, within this contemporary practice, rules are not necessarily engrained from a training of Typography or a background of industry: but one that is a playground of exciting conceptual possibilities, creating opportunities for innovation: to consolidate and encourage the appreciation and understanding of craft skills alongside conceptual and digital practice.
I will discuss a variety of artists’ books made by individual and collaborative practitioners who bring their own aesthetic, and experimental approaches to letterpress printing within book arts practice. Illuminating why and how they choose to use this labour-intensive process to create artists’ books: to what degree the preservation and progression of letterpress printing is continued, through methods of learning and sharing of tacit knowledge between its practitioners, to develop book arts practice in the UK.
I will discuss a variety of artists’ books made by individual and collaborative practitioners who bring their own aesthetic, and experimental approaches to letterpress printing within book arts practice. Illuminating why and how they choose to use this labour-intensive process to create artists’ books: to what degree the preservation and progression of letterpress printing is continued, through methods of learning and sharing of tacit knowledge between its practitioners, to develop book arts practice in the UK.