The list below is showing a range of art book fairs, both independent publishers and independent designers and artists. Research the book fairs online and explore the wide range of books by independent publishers, to gain a better understanding of the variety of books and publishing possibilities. You might want to visit one of the fairs in the future and explore The books.
Offprint London
Unfortunately due to Covid19 and the governments rules Offprint has been placed on hold for this year. However upon research I was able to locate information based on last years offprint hosted at Tate Modern. In May last year Tate Modern hosted to 130 independent and self-publishers from around the world. In the 5 years which Offprint has been running it has grown from strength to strength. Offprint trades in books, zines, magazines, CDs, posters, prints and more. Because of the restrictions at current times I came across on Luma-Arles.org a section of videos/interviews From publishers and artists. One of the videos I watched was ‘Loose Joints Publishing – Living trust by Buck Ellison’ This artist run photography publishing house explores progressive approaches to image making in book form. It was interesting to watch this video to see how these photo book publishers create publications in a very interesting and precise way with the artists in order to recreate and give a visual narrative within these books. Each title is the result of close collaboration with artists from beginning to end from designing, editing, to production, everything is done in house.
Art Book Fair London
London Art Book Fair brings together some of the most innovative art publishers both big and small for all to discover vibrant mixes of art books and magazines from around the world. Looking at the 2015 book fair which is specifically focusing on Scandinavian exhibitors across the region. Although it was slightly challenging seeking information on the Book fair from 2015, I did see that they had a few interesting workshops on at the time including photography, poetry, graphic design & illustration, even a workshop aimed at children.
Small Publishers Fair
The annual gathering of the Small Publishers Fair shows a number of artists, book designers, poets, publishers and writers with their work on exhibition. Although this years fair was cancelled I managed to find information on last years fair. Here I came across the artist ‘Dizzy Pragnell’. I was drawn in by her interesting examples of book art and paper sculptures. It’s clear that Dizzy Pragnells work challenges and explores the boundaries of paper, adding both two and three dimensional forms adding variety to the traditional concept of book art. (Images below show examples of Dizzy Pragnell’s work)
International Contemporary Artists’ Book Fair
The International Contemporary Artisits’ Book Fair is the longest running artists’ book fair outside of London. This book fair has attracted national and international participants and welcomed thousands of visitors across the UK. The book fair offers many interesting workshops and talks. If I personally attended this book fair I would be eager to attend the ‘Shy Bairns: Zine Workshop’. I loved working on my zine as part of assignment 1 and have since taken an interest so would find this workshop very interesting and beneficial to attend.
The Sheffield International Artist Book Prize
A small group of volunteers have been busy looking at ways to resurrect the artist books prize and house the collection of over 800 artists books since the closure of Bank Street Arts in 2017. The last book fair was hosted in 2019 offering exhibitions and workshops. I found it very interesting to discover that during these book fairs, the visitors are all asked and encouraged to vote for their favourite book(s). Following the success of the first Book Prize in 2008, the second instalment in 2009 saw additional prizes to broaden the scale of the prize itself. This of course encouraged more artists to enter their books and also helped draw in more visitors.
Dublin Art Book Fair
Ireland’s only book fair celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. The 2020 Book Fair theme is ‘Design as an attitude‘ with guest Alice Rawsthorn. Design with attitude explores how design addresses the major challenges of our time, such as the climate emergency and refugee crisis, the rise of inequality and intolerance, ensuring that accelerating advances in technology will effect us positively rather than negatively and how to rebuild our lives after the devastating Covid-19 crisis.
BABE Bristol Artists’ Book Event
On of the harder Book fairs to research, the only Book fair I could find little information on was 2015’s artists’ book fair. During this years fair 113 artists exhibited their books from places such as Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Sicily, Spain, South Korea and the UK, bringing an audience of 7150 visitors.
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