Presse Books
Fair
Details
Saturday 17 June 2023
11am – 6pm
FormaHQ & Peveril Gardens
140 Great Dover Street
London, SE1 4GW
Programme
11:00 STRIKE, live zine assembly
12:00 - 14:00 Cyanotypes in the Garden: workshop with artist Tom Pope
14:30 - 15:00 Everything Happens So Much: Oisín Roberts (Think Big, Read Community Library), Wes Knowler and D Mortimer talk about libraries
15:30 - 16:30 Pulped Pages: book-making with artist Lucie MacGregor, hosted by Drawing Room
16:00 - 16:30 Content Prole, AQNB Anthology: conversation between Steph Kretowicz & Jared Davis
17:00 - 17:30 Gilding the Rim: performative reading by co-operative queer press Canal
18:00 - 18:30 A Perfect Sentence: excerpts read by Oliver Frank Chanarin from his new book.
Music selected by Laila Majid, Rene Matić & Abbas Zahedi
With food from Teo's Pizza
STRIKE
Various Artists
62 pages, 210 x 297 mm
Unbound, edition of 500
2023
All profits generated from the sale of STRIKE are donated to Young Roots, a London-based charity working with young refugees and asylum seekers aged 11-25, most of whom are alone in the UK without their families.
Presse Books Fair
With Canal, Oliver Frank Chanarin, Steph Kretowicz & Jared Davis, Lucie MacGregor & Drawing Room, Tom Pope, and Oisín Roberts, Wes Knowler & D Mortimer
Saturday 17 June 2023
Presse Books Fair was a free one-day festival at FormaHQ bringing together over 30 independent publishers and artists, workshops, a live zine assemblage, talks, performances, readings and more. Celebrating independent publishing in all its configurations, Presse Books Fair aimed to support artists' and publishers in providing a platform for sharing work and making new connections.
With publishing from: Anamot Press, Art Monthly, AQNB, Banner Repeater, Belmacz, Bricks from the Kiln, Book Works, Bronze Age, Capricious Publishing, Canal, Chan Magazine, Common Threads Press, Cool Moist Books, Decadence Comics, Dominic Murray, Drawing Room, Electric Frog Press, Fieldnotes, Flatness, Folium, Forma, Good Press, InOtherWords, Lolli Editions, Marzipan, Matt's Gallery, Monitor Books, Montez Press, The Mosaic Rooms, Nieves, Onomatopee, Pagemasters, Pilot Press, Prototype Publishing, Rat Zine, Shanzhai Lyric, South London Gallery Bookshop, Southwark Park Galleries, Sticky Fingers Publishing, Strange Attractor Press, Supporting Material, Think Big Read Library, TLTRPreß, Tom Pope, Worms Magazine.
Instead of a commission or stall fee, tables were offered for free to invite both emerging and established practitioners in art publishing. Publishers who were unable to join in person were invited to send books to be sold at the Forma & Friends stall, with 40% of proceeds going towards the programming.
A new low-fi zine published by Forma, STRIKE, was pasted onto the brutalist orange concrete walls of Peveril Gardens. Inspired by DIY publishing and deconstructed book making, its pages contain artworks by 58 artists who were invited to respond to the title STRIKE – exploring action as political intent; as performative happening; and the gestural act of taking pen to page. Acting as an ‘anti-book’, this handmade publication aims to reverse the usual restrictions that can limit access to publishing, dismantle hierarchies, and give artists and creatives an opportunity to share their work, knowledge and ideologies.
With contributions from: Conor Ackhurst, Josephine Baker, Clémentine Bedos, Daria Blum, Adam Boyd, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Guendalina Cerruti, Joseph Cutts, Rafael D'Aló, Lewis Dalton Gilbert, Jordan Derrien, Frances Disley, Benedict Drew, Julie Dusuel, Nour el Saleh, Adham Faramawy, Flatness, Marco Fusinato, Patrick Goddard, Holly Graham, Daniel Greenfield-Campoverde, Winnie Hall, Clara Hastrup, Clare Holdstock, Anne Imhof, Kasra Jalilipour, Jack Jeans, Julie Koldby, Julianknxx, Lawrence Lek, Olukemi Lijadu, Laila Majid, Rene Matić, Abdollah Nafisi, Siân Newlove-Drew, Guy Oliver, Eleni Papazoglou, Kate Paul, Hamish Pearch, Richard Phoenix, Marc Prats, Raju Rage & Nad Ma, CJ Reay, Abigail Reynolds, Bryan Giuseppi Rodriguez Cambana, Cora Sehgal Cuthbert, Sin Wai Kin, Ebun Sodipo, David Steans, Grzegorz Stefański, Orfeo Tagiuri, Laila Tara H, Holly Eliza Temple, Karoly Tendl & Andras Nagy-Sandor, Kialy Tihngang, Ella Yolande, Linda Zagidulina and Abbas Zahedi.
Forma extends gratitude to the artists who took up the invitation to generously and collegiately share their work with STRIKE.