Tuesday 6 December 2022

Artefictions


Surprise package: files of The Camden Town Hoard, published by Studio Expurgamento with CB editions, were sent to the printer today. Finished books before Christmas, if the stars align. The book can be ordered now from the website.

From the introduction by Natalia Zagórska-Thomas: ‘The Camden Town Hoard is a collection of archaeological finds dredged up from a section of Regent’s Canal, roughly between Granary Square in Kings Cross and the London Zoo. The canal was dredged by an unknown person in the spring/summer of 2021 during lockdown. The majority of the objects revealed during this time were removed from the canal towpaths by Camden Council but not before 20 or so most fascinating artefacts were rescued and accessioned into the ExPurgamento archive. Since then the collection has been studied, thoroughly documented and provided with museum labels by a team of highly trained experts from a broad variety of backgrounds and interests … Identifying and contextualising the various objects threw up several new problems related to taxonomical classification. Specifically, it has been noted that the term “artefact” may not be an entirely sufficient or appropriate description of all archaeological material and it is therefore proposed that the term “artefiction” might sometimes be used instead.’

Six books for £40, anyone? Or 12 for £75? See the Season Tickets on the website home page. For yourself or as a gift to someone else (and I’ll do the posting).

Last Sunday, at the launch of the archive catalogue of Nick Wadley – artist and art historian, 1935–2017 – at Tate Britain, we had the rare and moving privilege of being able to leaf through his sketchbooks (below). Three books of Nick Wadley’s drawings were published by Dalkey Archive. A pamphlet of 14 of his drawings (‘on bookish and related matters’) was published by CBe in 2012 – copies are available free to the next 10 people who sign up for one of the Season Tickets.

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