BLAST AND PRAISE!
Charles Asprey is a publisher and, along with Simon Grant, he co-founded PICPUS Press in 2009 which publishes a quarterly pamphlet from a sheet of A2 paper folded to A6 size. The press emerged out of the desire for a pocket-sized vessel in which to publish art writing from “in-between” the headlines. It is distributed for free around the UK and further afield. Since 1994, Asprey has collected both artwork and art books. For this issue, he took TANK through some of the key works in his library.
Matt Mullican, That Person’s Workbook, 2007 (Ridinghouse + MER Paper Kunsthalle)
From Karsten Schubert’s imprint Ridinghouse, and I remember it being one of his favourites. Again very much made as a scrapbook using images directly from Mullican’s own notepads. It feels a bit supernatural dipping into this book and getting sucked into the less-visited hemisphere of the artist’s brain whilst he was under the influence of a professional hypnotist.
Antje Majewski, Teenage Pantomime, 2002 (aspreyjacques/Charles Asprey)
I commissioned this from Antje having seen the astonishing still images taken by her from the age of 13 that record her and her sisters growing up and transitioning to womanhood. I’m still so proud of this one and in awe of people who can have such a sophisticated vision while so young.
Amelia Barratt A.B., 2023 (Charles Asprey)
How do you celebrate an artist whose work is spoken word/performance, without those words going into a book to die on the page? We came up with what I think is an elegant solution, namely to have a bespoke website linking the book to ten exceptional recordings made at Abbey Road Studios so that you can read and listen at the same time. The book cover is PVC and the inside flaps each hold a flexi-disc (which used to be given away on the covers of music magazines in the 1970s and 1980s), each containing around two minutes of recording which you can play on a turntable.
Tenant of Culture, self-titled, 2020/21 (Charles Asprey with Soft Opening, London)
This is a special one not only for being the artist’s first-ever publication at a pivotal time in her career but because it was somehow produced during lockdown; rules had to be slightly bent (secret layouts on kitchen floors) and the fear of cross-contamination meant couriers delivered proofs and edits of the book in sanitised bags. Each participant then made changes, then re-sanitised pens, bag and papers to send the proofs onward. This project without doubt kept Antonia Marsh and myself sane during those awful months – and we ended up winning the Best Swiss Book Award 2021,with our designer Guillaume Chuard of Studio ARD. Yay!
Jochen Klein, self-titled, 1998 (Koenig Books). Edited by Wolfgang Tillmans
Klein was a key figure in German art of the 1990s and another who spent time in NYC where he was part of Group Material (1979-1996). This book was made the year after the artist’s passing by his partner Wolfgang Tillmans in conjunction with Klein’s estate; inevitably, it feels like a celebration of a life cut short, and a private journal mourning a great love.
Mark Leckey, On Pleasure Bent, 2015 (Wiels Brussels). Edited by Patrizia Dander and Elena Filipovic.
If you’re going to make a mid-career survey book then you may as well really go for it, and if you’re arguably the most important artist of your generation then you really, really can’t disappoint.
This stunner has chromed pages, a golden Benson & Hedges trope cover and probably the best printing I’ve ever seen in a contemporary artist’s monograph. The show in Brussels that accompanied this book was also pure gold.
In Praise of Patterned Papers: a collection of essays, 1997 (Incline Press at Printer Street in Oldham, UK). By Paul Nash, Phyllis Barron, Enid Marx, Alan Powers, Sebastian Carter, Victoria Hall, Graham Moss; with an introduction by Tanya Schmoller.
This collection combines key texts by artists who were at the forefront of pattern-making in the early 20th century – Enid Marx, Althea Willoughby, Eric Ravilious and Paul Nash amongst others – with reprints of the greatest patterned papers produced in the post-William Morris; new Modernist era alongside some contemporary practitioners. The Curwen Press was at the zenith of it all. This book is in two parts. The first is bound in wood with paper inserts and hessian backing and contains text and tipped-in inserts, a masterpiece by bookbinder Stephen Conway of Bradford. The second volume is basically a sample binder with about 30 exquisite folded papers. If you’re a fan of Bonnard, Vuillard, Edward Bawden or Chaimowicz, this one’s for you. It fills in the gap between the decorative and the fine arts that were so inseparable then and should be still.
