Feed 
Twitter 
Facebook a.a.s. instruct you to…
a.a.s. have been busily creating new instructions for visitors to follow based on the books in our exhibition The Cover of a Book is the Beginning of a Journey. .
You can see them each week on the balck board in the exhibition and on Saturday 27th November you’ll have the opportunity to act some of them out with the artists. Drop into the artists studio or contact them on aas@aasgroup.net if you’d like to join in.
Here’s a few they’ve come up with already…
If you’re into books next week is where it’s at! As well as The Cover of a Book is the Beginning of a Journey opening here at the Gallery on Saturday 9th Oct, next week sees the start of Birmingham Book Festival 2010:
‘Now in its eleventh year the Birmingham Book Festival makes its return to the city from Tuesday 5th – Thursday 21st October. Featuring both fiction and non-fiction writers, poets and workshops, it promises to be a celebration of literature encouraging us to read, write and think.
Highlights include Lionel Shriver, Jackie Kay, John O’Farrell, David Nicholls and Jonathan Coe, plus a panel of new voices. Other events include a keynote exploring the meaning of city of culture, a workshop in Ikon Eastside’s Hitchcock’s Hallway, tea and cake with Jenny Eclair and the BBC’s Environment and Science correspondent David Shukman who brings tales from his new book, Reporting Live from the End of the World.
The Festival also features international writers including the granddaughter of a murdered Prime Minister, Fatima Bhutto from Pakistan and contemporary German writer Jörg Albrecht. Other writers encouraging audiences to think include British diplomat Philip Barclay who brings an account of Zimbabwe’s violent 2008 elections and human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce who has represented families and victims of the Lockerbie air disaster, the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg and the Birmingham Six.’
For more information about all of the events visit www.birminghambookfestival.org
Tickets can be booked at www.birminghamboxoffice.com or by calling 0121 303 2323.
You canalso keep up to date with them though Twitter and Facebook.
The International Journal of Art and Design Education
VAGA have kindly dontaed back copies of The International Journal of Art & Design Education to the Art Library – Vol 18 – 27.
Pop in to have a look or get in touch if you are after a particular article…
New books in the Art Library
Well our first Artists’ Books Fair went well and as a result we’ve collected a lot of books and zines for the collection. Here’s a couple of highlights, but do pop into the Library to see the rest!
Unrealised Projects Volume 4: a partial introduction to a process in progress is a collection of unrealised projects submitted by various artists. Volume 4 has been guest curated by Josh Love, and centres on ‘an exchange of moral rights, production roles, obligation and the notion of realising unrealised works’.
Work to do! Self-Organisation in Precarious Working-Conditions is a fantastic document of a project series by the same name, held in Shedhalle, Zurich 2007-8.
We’ve also subscribed to a couple of independent journals:
Arty & Garageland, are both bi-annual magazines edited by Cathy Lomax, an artist and director of Transition Gallery.
Paper for Emerging Architectural Reasearch (P.E.A.R.) is an exciting newspaper exploring new architectural practice across Europe.
Artists’ Books Fair
Thanks to all of you who participated and supported our first Artists’ Books Fair last May. Have a look at some of the weekend’s highlights.
Photos taken by Ming de Nasty.
Twittering Art Library and Archives
We’re trying out a new way for you to make enquiries about the Collections -we’ve set up a twitter account so you can tweet us with quick questions on anything such as Epstein and the Garman family, past exhibiting artists, the architecture,
I will attempt to answer in 140 characters or post up the answers here on our blog and send a link. You can also ask questions on here, or if there’s something you want to ask without the whole internet world knowing then email me jonescheryl@walsall.gov.uk.
Get tweeting!
The Great Book Club Debate
Last Thursday Serena Korda came back to The New Art Gallery to lead a Book Club Debate on Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H.Lawrence. She was joined by journalist and broadcaster Helen Brown, along with several members of the public and gallery staff.
It was a great discussion, which got pretty heated, particulaly when topics such as feminism were examined.
Gallery Assistant Julie Jones gave us some valuable insights into Lawrence’s personal life. Discussion quicky turned to censorship and controversy, particularly regarding views on sex in the early 20th Century, which effected several artists of that time. Lawrence came up against a similar attitude from the public/authorities about Lady C as Epstein did about various works, for example The Tomb of Oscar Wilde and the British Medical Building sculptures. These works were lambasted at the time due to their frank nudity which depicts fertility, but at the time was seen as hugely distasteful.
Our debate went on to consider the impact of class and snobbery on these opinions and whether people were actually outraged because of the relationships between classes. This was a time of huge social change and Lawrence describes quite clearly his take on the change in societal structures.
We spoke for 2 hours solid, so I can’t go into too much detail here, but thanks to all who came and contributed. If you want to continue on here then please do!
As a quick aside, I also found that Lawrence had self-published Lady Chaterley’s Lover because he realised it would not be possible to do so through the normal routes. I didn’t know this before reading it, but it now seems fitting that we keep a copy here considering the collection of indendent/artists’ publishing that we hold (even if we don’t have the original) .
If anyone is interested in setting up a regular book club with a visual art slant, please do get in touch, or drop into the Art Library.
Serena will be hosting her final event on 21st November – a nose casting workshop for families. The Library of Secrets is here until 29th November.
Book Sniffing Event – The Library of Secrets
Lat night, Thursday 22 October, we hosted the first of the three events which are part of The Library of Secrets residency at The New Art Gallery Walsall. For those of you who missed it, it was a lovely evening with an interesting talk by the artist Serena Korda and book sniffer and journalist Murrough O’Brien followed by a book sniffing session!
The next free event is the Great Book Club Debate on Thurs 5 Nov at 6pm and is inspired by the controversial career of Jacob Epstein. The book club will discuss banned books and ideas of literary censorship. Chaired by Serena and journalist and broadcaster Helen Brown, the book to read is Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H Lawrence.
New Caruso St. John book
Especially for all you architecture enthusiasts out there… we’ve just got a lovely new book on Caruso St. John (the architects who designed The New Art Gallery).
Caruso St John: Almost Everything by Philip Urpsung is an in-depth look at almost everything they’ve worked on, looking at their sources of inspiration, and giving a wider context to their projects.
It includes essays, drawings, interviews with the architects and others, and some beautiful photographs.
Well worth popping into the Library to have a look…
Comment > Posts Tagged ‘art library’