Axon: Creative Explorations

This article contains two files: an introduction by the artist and a downloadable zine, to print in booklet imposition. 

This paper interrogates the common threads between protest literature and banner sculptural poetry, while it also explores alternative forms that protest banners take and the way that these communicate with ideas surrounding ecological and social justice. Overall, it seeks to theorise and map contemporary sculptural poetries produced by women in the UK and beyond and, in the process, to provide an up-to-date account of this mode, not only from a critical angle but from a creative angle as well. The paper starts with considering poetry in banner form as a prominent element of protest with relevant work by Thalia Campbell and Maggie O’Sullivan, and then considering wearable art by Rachel Fallon as a dynamic and multisensory praxis. These materials and more are blended with relevant secondary literature review and creative responses. The textual banners presented here showcase innovative poetry’s potential to destabilise canons, reconfigure, and restitch our social and ecological stratification.

Georges Perec’s postcards were first published in the French magazine Le FOU parle, in 1978. They were not postcards at all, just the written messages, and far from their description ‘en Couleurs Véritables’ (in Real Colour), they were entirely in black and white. The Postcards for Perec mail art project responded to Perec’s 243 imaginary postcard messages by creating the missing images as real postcards.

Sarah Bodman reflects on 13 years of Bookarts at UWE Bristol’s World Book Night (WBN) project; a text and image / artists’ books-based event which has evolved from an initial collaboration with the artist and poet Nancy Campbell into an annual, international, participatory celebration of reading and creative making. Inspired by our shared interests in literature, poetry, artists’ books and mail art, WBN introduces ourselves and other artists/writers to particular books and ways of working together.