At one point last year I was asked by the curator Frances Woodley if I would contribute to an artists' book project and as I like to challenge myself, thought it an interesting thing to get involved with. I had to come up with 20 images, all of which were to be folded in half when they were inserted and bound into the 20 artists' books that would result from the process.
As is often the case with these things you were given a set of rules to follow and an introduction to the history of the project. The ongoing artists book project 1SSUE was initiated in 2002 by artist Richard Cox. Since then, its four rotating editors and artists, Richard Cox, Heather Parnell, Phil Mead and Hilary Wagstaff, have ensured that it has continued.
Frances Woodley was the guest editor for 1SSUE 59, and it was in this role that she had contacted myself.
Each artist had to make as many pages as there were participants (19), plus one. The pages are then collated and bound into artists’ books and then distributed to the participants. We were also informed that one copy of every edition of 1SSUE is housed in the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford.
1SSUE 59 had a theme that we were all to work to, it was the prefix ‘Re-’ as when used in front of a verb.
We were given some information about this:
‘Re-’ is derived from a Latin prefix, a root word meaning: “back, back from, back to the original place;” also ‘again, anew, once more,’ also conveying the notion of “undoing” or “backward,” . . .
‘’The many meanings in the notion of “back” give ‘re-’ its broad sense-range: “a turning-back; opposition; restoration to a former state; “transition to an opposite state.”
From the extended sense in “again,” ‘re-’ becomes “repetition of an action,” and in this sense it is extremely common as a formative element in English, applicable to any verb, and we were also given some examples.
Guidelines also included some practical instructions.
Your page dimensions which have to be 25 h x 40 w cm exactly, with no rough/cut edges to the sides.
When folded, each side had to be 25 h x 20 w cm exactly and there was a drawing embedded into the instructions to make sure we understood what to do.
Paper had to fold flat and not be too bulky. (240-350 gsm being recommended)
We were to work on one side of paper only. To use any medium (but nothing that stains, leaks, rubs or desiccates onto others’ work.) Artwork must be original. If printed, edition style, the design to be original to this 1SSUE.
All pages were to be sent to Frances by Friday 24 October 2025.
These are the pages I drew and sent off.
All the images were drawn with a black biro. I took the ‘RE’ theme very literally and simply sat down and drew black ballpoint pen marks over and over again, each time allowing whatever to come into being to suggest some form of collective human encounter. Then as small crowds of marks/people emerged, I would draw whatever it was they were encountering.
We also had to decide on a title. I asked if possible to set the title in a range of sizes? Like so:
Black Ballpoint Human Marks: Drawn Again And Again And Again And Again
Finally we had to send website and social media addresses for inclusion in the ‘List of Artists’ and a postal address to which 1SSUE 59 was to be delivered.
Hopefully you can see from the images how I tried to compositionally respond to the fact that each page would be folded in two. I realised as I drew the images how much I enjoyed drawing with a simple biro, you just have to let the drawing be as it needs to be, no adjustment, no clever mark making, just an idea and an image to carry it. I thought they made an interesting set of drawings and was slightly disappointed that as a set they would be immediately separated from each other and each drawing would have to fend for itself within whatever collective of images it found itself next to. This post is the only way they will ever be seen as a collection, so I will have to be content with that.
My copy of the final book arrived in a box and I now have it on a shelf in my studio.
1SSUE 59
The book is a fascinating format and deserves serious study as an object in its own right. As part of my job as a print technician back in the late 1970s I had to look at basic book binding, so am very aware of how much care must have gone into this aspect of putting these artists' books together.
The spine and opening inserts
The spine of any book is a vital signifier. In this case the stitching is beautifully done and it conceptually links the interior to the exterior, thus unifying the project and signifying that all the various participants are being cared for.
Detail of the stitching
As you open the book, the significance of the spine is revealed, as it is an integral part of the opening experience, lying between the two opening inserts which are composed on the left of a stamp collection set into a transparent stamp album page and on the right each participating artist's titles for their various contributions, which are also set into the same transparent stamp album context. Suggesting that the contributors will be conserved and collected together carefully.
My title as it appears set into the stamp album format
All of these design decisions go towards the construction of the artists' book as a unique object, that is not just a collection of artists' images stuck together, but which is a composite reflecting the 're' concept that artists had to respond to.
As you open the book you realise that it is bound as a concertina or what is sometimes called a Leporello fold.
1SSUE 59 opened out
The term 'Leporello fold' reminds us that there can be a far more performative engagement with the concertina form. You can engage much more of your body in its display; a realisation of this is seen at the moment in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, when Giovanni's manservant innumerates his master's infidelities, by reading from a list written on a concertina of paper, of the thousands of women Don Giovanni has seduced. This list takes up so much space that the manservant, Leporello, has had to write it on a piece of paper folded onto itself many times. During the opera this list written on a concertina fold is unfolded to great effect, the drama of the unfolding being so much more spectacular than it would have been if Leporello had kept a simple notebook. Hence the term a 'Leporello fold'.
The reading of Leporello's List: Basso Marco Vinco in Don Giovanni
There are of course 19 participants, so therefore 19 double spreads of artists' works. There is no common style to the people involved and I was relieved to see that I was the only person to make a biro drawing but there was a fair amount of print and collage, which I was sort of expecting, as participation was about making multiples of images.
Sample pages from 1SSUE 59
My own contribution when folded was I thought ok, but perhaps not the best of the images I drew, but I am usually the worst judge of my own stuff, so I wont worry too much about that.
My contribution: Biro drawing of repeated figures engaging with a burning head form
Don't ask me what it means because I don't know, I just started drawing repetitive figure type marks and the image gradually arrived. So begins a new year of posts on drawing related thoughts, this will be the 13th year that I have kept this blog, a fact that amazes me, as when I started it, it was an addition to my BA Fine Art Drawing strand teaching. Then the strand was dropped, I reduced my teaching hours, then I retired, left the university but eventually returned as a research fellow; each week though I have somehow nearly always managed to put up a post about something to do with drawing, although lately posts have had more to do with my own practice and less to do with the wider practice of drawing as a discipline. The longer I move away from my teaching role, the more I become involved with my own work, but after over 50 years teaching art, I will always have one eye on a student audience, many of which will be past students.
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