ARTISTS' BOOKS

Artists' books come in an almost infinite number of forms. Being to some extent closed or enclosed, they can be the perfect vehicles to contain the more personal and intimate expressions of their makers. The book works of the three artists in this show do relate to their larger framed work on the walls, but in different ways conceptually and technically.

Richard Pinkney’s "Best foot forward" celebrates fifty years of his Trivia Press. For fifty years Trivia Press has acted as a platform from which to encounter his creation of musings, insights, imponderables, silliness and moments of wit and complaint. It has supported his preoccupation with the employment of non-representational and idiosyncratic styles to achieve narrative ends and it has confirmed his particular way of sharing his reflections with others.

Starting in a notebook using a grid as his landscape, he created an ever-expanding series of jottings that he logged on his computer. The outcome is a limited edition portfolio in six sections each containing a text, 15 black and white drawings and four coloured ‘lay-bys’, together with an appendix of six coloured images." Individual sheets from the portfolio and cards will also be available singly.

Dale Devereux Barker is exhibiting a series of irreverent artist’s books which are constantly worked upon and have no parameters of subject matter, media or taste. On the walls are a sequence of unique imaginary landscapes (developed over the past twelve years) made from the waste products of his lino-cutting activities, and another sequence of mixed media works that straddle both areas, encompassing print and collage, addressing the sublime to the ridiculous. These works show a more private side of Dale's practice that the public never witnesses and are all the more interesting because of that. Individual sheets of the many small mixed media works can be selected singly or grouped to make up a unique personal book: perfect Christmas presents.

Jason Hicklin’s set of 20 etchings Orkney: Gods of the Earth Gods of the Sea (2015) and the earlier Mull: Water Surrounded Land (2013) relate more closely to his framed prints in that they are printed from the same etching plates. They are printed on smaller sheets, to the edge of the paper, and are housed together with an etched map, in handmade solander boxes in editions of ten. His solo Orkney exhibition at North House Gallery (7–28 November) has been condensed to make room for the other two artists in this pre-Christmas show, where his seriousness is balanced by their serious pursuit of the trivial.