Dr Conor Wilson provides insight into his recent collaboration with Kellie Hindmarch.
I was awarded £400 from HEQR funds and was able to supplement this with £300 from the CCCI Affiliates fund. These awards have allowed me to collaborate with Kellie Hindmarch on the production of an artists’ book, as an output for the Random Precision Amendments (RPA) portfolio.
RPA is an interdisciplinary project, centred on the production of 28 collages with paired poems, that begins to map a new territory between visual poetry and ekphrasis. The project explores both how we produce images and how we write; how we show image and text together and how this influences the ways in which a viewer/reader might interact with the work. The claim to originality is that the confluence and comparison of visual and textual methods have generated a new relationship between image and text.
As has been explored in the reflective writing done throughout the project, the collages and poems are intimately linked, through shared materials and methods of construction. The collage/poem pairs have been shared in a number of ways:
- Exhibition of original postcard collages and printed poems
- Digital image and text in various formats (TIFFs, JPEGs, PDFs and PowerPoint presentations)
- Video and sound (image carousel with voice recordings).
Each of these ways of sharing has taught me something about the research – through production, reflection on results and audience reception. The exhibition and the video have seemed the most successful, with a ‘Book PDF’, despite being carefully designed, feeling more like documentation of the research.
There has been a constant play between analogue and digital – visual materials (art postcards and magazines) provide textual materials and Microsoft Word and Adobe InDesign are integral to the production of the research. I decided to produce a handmade artists’ book, in collaboration with Kellie Hindmarch, further exploring possibilities for showing image/text and for the use of hand and digital processes. This is not a commercial proposition, but an experiment in making a new form of dissemination for the research.
As a bibliophile, I am drawn to the allure of the physical book – its feel, its weight, its portability, its presence in a room, on a shelf or on a table; its easily accessible, pick-up or put-down-ability; the joy of being able to flick through and land somewhere that catches your eye. I’m drawn to the playfulness and handmade quality of artists’ books, but can feel frustrated if this gets in the way of the mechanics of a book. I don’t like books that I can’t easily navigate. And it is very important for me that the pages lay flat, particularly if the left and right pages need to be seen together.
In my initial discussions with Kellie, we made a list of essentials:
- Collages and poems must work as pairs
- Full-colour, high-quality print on matt paper for the collages
- Accessibility – a format that sits on a shelf, has a spine, lays flat and that can be flicked through
- Emphasise the content – simple design, high-quality materials and production
- Retain the order of the series, if possible – RPA Nos. 1 – 28.
We agreed that we wanted to retain the feel of some of the material already produced, but to exploit the possibilities inherent in the handmade book form to produce something particular; to play with the nature of the collage material and use a layering principle in the book. In line with the experimental nature of the project and the funds available, we decided to produce an Artists Edition of
9 books.
We started by choosing paper stocks and print processes. I wanted a highly colour responsive matt paper for the collages and we agreed to use Ripe Digital, a local company that Kellie has worked with for many years. They are flexible and reliable, and their HP Indigo digital press offers the closest thing to offset lithography quality.
We decided to use:
- Mohawk Superfine Eggshell Ultrawhite for the text
- Fedrigoni Tintoretto Gesso for the images.
We also decided on a French Portfolio / drop case bind, with French and kettle stitching.
Kellie recommended Lara Hempsall, a Technical Demonstrator working with Digital Print and Bookbinding, for the stitching and the binding. Over several meetings with Lara and Kellie, we talked through a number of possibilities. In the end, we agreed that the collages would be printed on both sides of a heavier paper and sewn into the book as inserts, giving the collages a similar feel to the original postcard format. They will slot into the signature sections (12 pages in each section). Landscape postcards, of which there are 9, will be printed on gatefold pages.
We could not have arrived at this solution without Kellie’s intimate knowledge of book construction – how signature sections work. It has been a joy to work with both her and Lara.
For our last meeting, Lara made a blank book. It is much easier to get a sense of how the various papers, weights and colours will work together when you can see and feel a physical object.
We will use the same cloth (Colorado) in black, with grey end pages. The book title will be embossed, black on black. Image and text sources, which appear before each collage in the Book PDF, will be moved to an index at the back of the book. This will be a different colour and weight, probably Mohawk Fine stock in light grey. Matt Robertson, who has worked as a professional graphic designer, will lay up the index.
Progress has been slow through the summer, but all the design work is done and the edition will be printed and bound October-November 2026. Big thanks to Kellie, Lara and Matt.