Posted By: Rowan Whiteside, 09 February 2012
Printed in Norfolk is an exciting new exhibition which showcases twenty years of Coracle Publications. Project Manager Helen Mitchell has kindly written us a blog explaining the inspiration behind the exhibition.
In the late 1980s I spent a few months working on a catalogue of the archive for Coracle Publications – 100 black box files of pamphlets, maquettes, layouts and correspondence with leading artists and poets. I fell in love with the books. They were beautiful, clever, under-stated, playful, thoughtful and precise. I’ve been a fan ever since.
This spring I’m working on an exhibition Printed in Norfolk - Coracle Publications 1989 to 2012 www.printedinnorfolk.org.uk, which is coming to The Gallery at NUCA on St Georges Street 20th March to 21st April. There’ll be artists’ books, poetry, postcards, catalogues and anthologies. And, there’ll be a ‘reading room’ where you’ll be able to settle in and leaf through Coracle books in your own time.
The choice of venues for the subsequent tour shows how much Coracle has to do with poetry and writing as well as the visual arts. After Site Gallery - Sheffield’s international contemporary art gallery - we head for Shandy Hall in north Yorkshire (home of the Laurence Sterne Trust) and then the Saison Poetry Library on London’s South Bank – neatly coinciding with the wonderful Small Publishers Fair http://www.rgap.co.uk/spf.php.
So – what exactly is Coracle?
It’s the nom de plume of poet, artist and curator Simon Cutts who was joined in the late eighties by artist and writer Erica Van Horn (her ‘Living Locally’ journal here
http://www.coracle.ie/journal/journal.html), as co-director. Cutts has been a key player in UK arts and publishing since the 1970s and in his roles as curator and publisher he has always worked collaboratively with other artists, poets and writers.
In the exhibition you’ll find poetry and a whole distinct world of ‘Coracle’, where drawings, recipes, maps, found notices, place names, single words or envelope interiors can all form the premise of a book. Plus - if you ever have to make a book or get something printed, this exhibition has ideas and inspiration in bucketloads.
So why ‘Printed in Norfolk’? The books and works on show were printed in Kings Lynn by Crome and Akers, a commercial company which has since closed down, its printing presses shipped to India. Crome and Akers bread and butter work was raffle tickets and posters for auctions. With Coracle they made books that are in collections, libraries and archives around the world.
Simon and Erica will be talking about their work at a lecture in NUCA’s Duke Street lecture theatre at 6pm on Thursday 22nd March. Details of this and other activities – including an ‘in conversation’ with Simon Cutts and Fakenham book binder Stuart Settle can be found at www.printedinnorfolk.org.uk
