by Coracle Press
13.10.2021 – 15.01.2022
BOOOOOKS invites a single arts publisher at a time and presents a selection of their work. For the first season, a collection from Coracle is presented that includes both recent and rare editions in a variety of formats produced over the past five decades.
Coracle is a small publishing press directed by writer and artist Erica Van Horn and poet, artist and editor Simon Cutts, from what was a small farm between the hills of South Tipperary, Ireland since 1996.
Mostly based in London from the nineteen seventies, as both a publisher, gallery, and a space for books, workfortheeyetodo became its last bookshop project there in the mid-nineteen nineties.
In this later remote form, it continues as printer-publisher, and editor of spaces, employing many of the devices and formats of hypothetical publishing inherent in the small press. Inevitably, much of the content of the publishing is of the nature of the book itself, in both critical and playful dimensions. At the same time, there is always the residue of poetry, and a concern with the mechanisms of the book as a manifestation of the poem itself, together with other books by artists, writers, and others without category.
The books themselves are not so concerned with craft tradition, limitedness of edition, hand-made paper and elaboration of binding, as with the plain and simple casebound book, the sewn paperback, the extensions of ephemera, and their availability.
Artists include: Ian Hamilton Finlay & Ian Gardner, Stephen Willats, Hamish Fulton, Richard Tuttle, Richard Long, Peter Downsbrough, Katie Holten, Erica Van Horn, Simon Cutts, Harry Gilonis, Anne Moeglin Delcroix, Shelagh Wakely ...
Living and Publishing in Tipperary
It was chance that brought us to this hidden part of rural Ireland in 1996. After bookshops and galleries made in a variety of urban places, we were seeking a project which might unify and integrate our activities as artists and publishers with a sense of place. In Tipperary, we found a fresh space and buildings which we could adapt to our needs.
With the accumulated backlist of Coracle, some of which had by now become quite rare, and with the modest production of four to six new books a year, we figured that we could survive from such a remote location. Added incentives were the fact of no Value Added Tax on books in Ireland as well as a tax exemption for the work we make as artists. A special book rate through the postal system made our life on this island possible. We could live and work here, well under the radar of bureaucracy, Essentially, publishing remains the same as always : the conceived book, its editing and production, its warehousing and distribution by whatever means. For Coracle, very little fits an existing format, and each printing presents its own problems and its own solutions. Or more fundamentally, as the American poet Charles Olsen said ”Don’t ever be intimidated by the disdain and disinterest in the world. Get yourself some type, get yourself some paper and print it.”
If one can publish from here, one can do it anywhere!
by Coracle Press
13.10.2021 – 15.01.2022
BOOOOOKS invites a single arts publisher at a time and presents a selection of their work. For the first season, a collection from Coracle is presented that includes both recent and rare editions in a variety of formats produced over the past five decades.
Coracle is a small publishing press directed by writer and artist Erica Van Horn and poet, artist and editor Simon Cutts, from what was a small farm between the hills of South Tipperary, Ireland since 1996.
Mostly based in London from the nineteen seventies, as both a publisher, gallery, and a space for books, workfortheeyetodo became its last bookshop project there in the mid-nineteen nineties.
In this later remote form, it continues as printer-publisher, and editor of spaces, employing many of the devices and formats of hypothetical publishing inherent in the small press. Inevitably, much of the content of the publishing is of the nature of the book itself, in both critical and playful dimensions. At the same time, there is always the residue of poetry, and a concern with the mechanisms of the book as a manifestation of the poem itself, together with other books by artists, writers, and others without category.
The books themselves are not so concerned with craft tradition, limitedness of edition, hand-made paper and elaboration of binding, as with the plain and simple casebound book, the sewn paperback, the extensions of ephemera, and their availability.
Artists include: Ian Hamilton Finlay & Ian Gardner, Stephen Willats, Hamish Fulton, Richard Tuttle, Richard Long, Peter Downsbrough, Katie Holten, Erica Van Horn, Simon Cutts, Harry Gilonis, Anne Moeglin Delcroix, Shelagh Wakely ...
Living and Publishing in Tipperary
It was chance that brought us to this hidden part of rural Ireland in 1996. After bookshops and galleries made in a variety of urban places, we were seeking a project which might unify and integrate our activities as artists and publishers with a sense of place. In Tipperary, we found a fresh space and buildings which we could adapt to our needs.
With the accumulated backlist of Coracle, some of which had by now become quite rare, and with the modest production of four to six new books a year, we figured that we could survive from such a remote location. Added incentives were the fact of no Value Added Tax on books in Ireland as well as a tax exemption for the work we make as artists. A special book rate through the postal system made our life on this island possible. We could live and work here, well under the radar of bureaucracy, Essentially, publishing remains the same as always : the conceived book, its editing and production, its warehousing and distribution by whatever means. For Coracle, very little fits an existing format, and each printing presents its own problems and its own solutions. Or more fundamentally, as the American poet Charles Olsen said ”Don’t ever be intimidated by the disdain and disinterest in the world. Get yourself some type, get yourself some paper and print it.”
If one can publish from here, one can do it anywhere!
BOOOOOKS
Florastraat 31
2140 Antwerp
Open by appointment
info@boooooks.org
+32 4719 00789