Artist's Book Yearbook 2003-2005 - Book Arts - University of the ...

The Beano Annual (1966)
Any Beano annual, actually… But this is the
one that for me is the standard by which all
others are judged. It came out when I was eight
years old and still believed in fairies, bogeymen
and Father Christmas. I also believed that all
the characters in the Beano were really alive.
I got my first Beano annual in 1960 and have
collected them ever since…40 copies in total,
donated last year to Arthur, my eight year old
son.
For those of you not in the know, the Beano
is a coded anarchist manifesto encouraging
young people to a lifelong struggle against all
forms of authority. It offers instruction in the
creation of home made weapons of mass
distraction; the cattie, the pea shooter, the
water pistol and the soap box cartie. Authority,
bullying and spoilsport, is symbolised by the
parentally wielded slipper. Here are the most
famous anti-establishment heroes in British
history: Minnie the Minx, Billy Whizz, Dennis
the Menace and my own personal favourite,
the eternally conniving, devious and cunning
Roger the Dodger. The first books I ever made
were my own hamfisted reconstructions of
Roger’s famous Dodge Books.
I wrote to Roger for his autograph. An artist
sent me back a hand drawn cartoon of his Dad,
ears steaming, swishing his ever ready slipper.
The speech balloon read “ I asked Roger to
sign this , but he’s dodged it!” On a more
serious note, many years later, studying some
early English illuminated books from the 13th
century, I was struck by how similar they were
in structure, if not content, to the Beano,
speech balloons and all.
A Book Of Fig’s
Guy Begbie
At the 1997 London Artists Bookfair at the
Barbican, this was the only book I bought.
It encapsulated for me something you can do
in a book that you can’t do in any other
medium. It contains what seems to be a series
of scribbles on each page (fig’s 1,2,3 etc).
12
Intrigued, I asked the artist if they were a form
of writing. He said, no, they were drawings of
writing. Wow! That question has intrigued me
for years - how do you actually draw writing?
Rarely has the symbiosis of text and image
been so neatly encapsulated than in this little
handbound treasure. I show it to students
constantly…
N. B. Since writing this, I took the book to
show some students and it didn’t come home,
presumed lost. Any more copies hanging about,
Guy?
Samizdat Les Bicknell & Derek Humphries,
Oblivion Boys Press (15th October, 1985)
I swapped this with Les for one of my own
books Actually, I asked him for one of his
expensive one-off metal and wood masterpieces,
but he tactfully sent me this instead.
I remember seeing the book in 1985, not long
after it had been made, and feeling quite
jealous, as it contained all the elements I was
myself using in the early Liver & Light’s
manifestos, but done more elegantly and
effectively. It has rubber stamps, found text,
tip-ins, photocopies and so on.
It sums up for me the post punk period of
innocent inventiveness, owing much to the
fanzine underground, when computers were
only found in banks and the photocopier
was a new frontier ripe for exploration:
“Derek Humphries and Leslie Bicknell are the
proud parents of Samizdat, conceived whilst
enjoying the life of the idle poor in the early
summer of 1985, nurtured through difficult
times and finally executed on 15th October
1985 in a severely limited edition of 20
copies…”
Poetic and personal, knowing no rules,
straining at its own boundaries, I stole the
techniques, made them work for me and
moved on…