Pollocks Gallimaufry

....Less than two weeks to go - images right way up this time - first few scenes and the last theatre - come along and see the rest from 8th November until 7th December - see post below

Pollocks Toy Theatres exhibition - Pollocks Gallimaufry

Have been beavering away at paper toy theatres so not much sign of my recently - apart from signing Voyaging Out in London bookshops ( Hatchards Piccadilly with Maggie Humm and Tate Modern bookshop with Michele Roberts - both lovely events ...)
and I forgot to post up the recent review by John May - see post below this one for the link..... - many thanks to John for his kind words....

I was going to paste up some images of work in progress but I see we are in Baselitz mode again -
however it will all the more exciting for you when you see them the right way sound and in 3D - bought wood and lights this morning so all getting very exciting...
this first theatre is inspired by Mister Blake and Catherine ( glad to see she is getting her due at the wonderful new Blake exhibition at Tate Britain) and Mister Tom Paine - a dialogue around Romanticism and Reason....
Theatre Two continues the story with a Heading for Extinction theme - more pics to come - possibly also with the world turned upside down....

John May review of Voyaging Out

hqinfo.blogspot.co.uk

Cartonera Festival

Not sure whether you'll be able to read this but have just been sent this poster image -

  Cartonera Festival - on now!

remember too - only three days until Print and Illustration Fair at Towner - see previous post

Lasting impressions at Lewes Live Lit and Towner /Design for Today Illustration and Print Fair

The Egrets Way exhibition is now over
but I have a last weekend of my ArtWave Open Studio at Con Club139 High Street Lewes - BN7 1XS11-5 tomorrow 31st August and 1st September

It is almost autumn

and time to advertise the Towner and Design for Today

Print and Illustration Fair

I will be having a stand there all weekend 21-22 September

I will also be talking about my own artwork at All Saints, Lewes as part of Lewes Live Literature's Lives of the Artists, a conversation about my artwork with Mark Hewitt :

Tues 10 September, 7,45

Carolyn Trant: Lasting Impressions

Artist Carolyn Trant, in conversation with LLL's Artistic Director Mark Hewitt, discusses her work and life - with projected images on the large screen. Carolyn is a highly reputed artist/printmaker who has specialised in making 'artists books'.
Lives of the Artists #5. A series in which local artists talk about how and why they ended up doing what they do in the way that they do it.

Lewes Live Literature presents Carolyn Trant in conversation Carolyn is a painter/maker who specialises in 'Artists Books', exploring images and words in a range of ways from sculptural objects and installations to hand-cut and printed woodblock books. Recently she's also been making playing cards, Mexican style cartoneras using old newspapers and recycled cardboard, and paper toy theatres for an autumn exhibition of contemporary explorations of the genre for the Pollocks Toy Museum in London, all reflecting current political and climate emergencies. Tuesday 10^th Sept 7.45pm Tickets: £8 advance or £10 on door. www.leweslivelit.co.uk

Voyaging Out - British Women Artists from Suffrage to the Sixties; Thames and Hudson ;

Sept 2019

I will be talking about my new book about Women Artists at the following venues in London and beyond;

 https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/talk/voyaging-out-british-women-artists

 This event with  Michele Roberts starts at 7pm on 25 September and will be held in the Tate Modern bookshop.

This Hatchards Piccadilly  event is also up online. It starts at 6.30pm on Thursday 12^th September.

 https://www.hatchards.co.uk/hatchards-calendar/voyaging-out-an-evening-with-carolyn-trant-and-maggie-humm/

  Maggie Humm says: I’m so enjoying Voyaging Out - an amazing work of retrieval and celebration and with glorious images. The book manages to be both accessibly interesting and scholarly.

A hard thing to pull off.

 Rachel Cooke’s review ran in Sunday’s Observer. It is also online here in full:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/26/voyaging-out-british-women-artists-suffrage-sixties-carolyn-trant-review

‘diligent, detailed and full of surprises: everyone is here, from the still celebrated (Sybil Andrews, Vanessa Bell, Barbara Hepworth) to the little known and the almost completely forgotten (Catherine Giles, Ithell Colquhoun, Cecile Walton) … Voyaging Out bulges with hope for the future: for more research, for more books and, above all, for more inclusive and wide-reaching shows.’

– I am also speaking at

Taunton Literary Festival – 6.30pm at Brendon’s Bookshop Taunton  - 14^th November

Gregynog - RS Thomas Society AGM re Elsi Eldridge on 2^nd November

and Pallant House Radical Women exhibition - a talk on 28^th November- evening, probably now (or soon) up on their website….

Pics of our lovely Linklater Egrets Way support show

If the hanging looks a bit wonky it was quite difficult finding ways to creatively hang in a usually non-art venue! many thanks to my helpers and to the Linklater for supporting this collaborative project....

Lewes ArtWave opens 17th August

See below previous post for the Egrets Way poster -
our Lewes Printmakers exhibition will be open for the first two weekends and bank holiday monday
and we will be selling our new Egrets Way calendar for 2020.

I will also be having my own Open Studio at the Con Club as usual, 11.00 am to 5.00 pm

for all three weekends including the bank holiday

17/18; 24/25/26; 31 August and 1st September 

showing my hand-made prints and Artist Books, woodcut playing cards and cartoneras, and work in progress on my paper toy theatres for an exhibition at the Scala Street pollocks Toy Museum in London opening on November 8th and running until December 7th.

Inspired by the wonderful Extinction rebellion posters around the town recently I have made some hand-coloured woodcut rebellious books of my own featuring vanishing British species

and i am currently finishing some street style cartonera versions printed on newspaper pages featuring protests and climate emergency news which make for some quite grim reading en masse.

On thursday 10th September I am in conversation with Mark Hewitt as part of Lewes Live Literature's Lives of the Artists series at All Saints

More news of where I will be giving talks about my Voyaging Out book shortly.

Lewes Railway Land Summer Festival - Egrets Way Cycle Track Poster

This is to advertise our Lewes Printmakers stand at the Lewes Railway Land Summer Festival - Looking Out 2-5pm Sunday 9th June, 

which in turn is to advertise our Lewes Printmakers Artwave Exhibition the last two weekends of August  (including the bank holiday) in support of the ongoing development of the new cycle track down the side of the river from Lewes to Newhaven. We will be showing work done inspired by the landscape and wildlife along the trail and we are calling it Eye Spy with some suggestions for family spotting expeditions and pointing up places of interest along the way; the birds you might see include the peregrines nesting in the Cliffe chalk cliff, kingfishers on chilly brooks, herons and egrets, and of course Newhaven's iconic cormorant and shags hanging out their wings to dry - if you are really lucky you might even get a glimpse of the seal which swims up to Cliffe Bridge and beyond.....she has even been spotted with a large grey mullet in her mouth....

In August Lewes Printmakers will be joined by a photographer, a jeweller, and two watercolour artists, for a joint show in the undercroft of the Linklater Pavilion - the Jolly Room.

Join us on June 9th for a sneak preview and at 4pm  Myles Jenner will be auctioning 6x6" 'postcards' by local artists and enthusiasts to raise funds for the RLWT. 

Voyaging Out

I suppose it is about time I came clean and announced that my book about women artists will finally be out at the beginning of September; it has taken up an awful lot of valuable art-working time but I hope people will think it has been worth it, I certainly learned a lot from doing it and met lots of very lovely helpful people, and saw lots of amazing artworks by women that I would have never seen otherwise. Alexandra Harris has kindly given me a cheering endorsement - it was reading her book The Romantic Moderns that made me think of writing mine so there is a lovely circularity in it, and relief that she has really captured the spirit of what I was trying to do:

It's a wonderfully rich panorama of creative lives, written with conviction and integrity; and cumulatively powerful in questioning the terms of our appreciation. the sheer number and range of artists included here is thrilling: every chapter introduced me to new figures and re-awoke me to old admirations. Trant valuably turns our attention beyond the galleries to think about design, teaching, friendship and collaboration. By turns elegiac and celebratory, her book is truthful, practical, open-minded, and points us in new directions.


Tate Britain has just turned its modern galleries over to a hang of all women artists from their permanent collection, but only from 1960 onwards, leading on from my period 1910-60, but still its a start... and so many of the women in my book had concerns and interests outside gallery-land.



I am just off to Taunton to speak on a panel discussing the artist Doris Hatt at The Museum of Somerset - thursday 2nd May 7.30- 9pm - 
" Discover what it was like for a female artist studying and practising in the early 20th century. Join Carolyn Trant author of the forthcoming Thames and Hudson publication Voyaging Out; Women Artists in Britain from the suffragettes to the Sixties and exhibition co-curators Dr Stephen Lisney and Dr Denys Wilcox."
book online or ring 01823 255 088

And talking about websites, I have just been introduced to a lovely website documenting everything you might like to know about Schubert's song cycle Die Winterreise - with lots of visuals. I am delighted to have had my Artists Book of 2007 included in the art section among other very interesting contemporary images. 

https://diewinterreise.net

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Cartoneras for BABE Bristol

I first saw cartoneras at an evening event at the British Library focussing on South America and loved them immediately - the ones we were shown were made by a re-cycling co-operative in Mexico, an anthology of poems and short written pieces bound roughly in cardboard with individual hand-painted covers. Originally cartoneras - or chapbooks - were made in S America as a protest against the 'selective editorial market during a period of economic hardship', photocopied or non-professionally printed; traditionally not-for-profit, shared among like-minded people outside mainstream bookshops, originally challenging the status quo but inevitably now becoming more aesthetic and less challenging. Those made in Mexico by people on the streets used street people to collect old cardboard who depended on such paid tasks for survival.
This information comes from an essay by Lucia Rosa about Dulcineia in the one I bought ; I have written and paraphrased very quickly and doubtless rather inaccurately but I hope it gives a quick idea.
In a period of extreme chaos here in GB I felt moved to do some very quick spontaneous work referring extreme events, focusing on women, accelerated climate change, political chaos and inequality and the contrast between countryside, towns and the metropolis - and felt, how better than to use old woodcuts of mine printed onto current newspapers to make palimpsests, working spontaneously and freely , abandoning aesthetic considerations where possible and just seeing what happened - an extension of my 'tarot' cards project on a slightly larger scale ( see two posts back...), involving re-cycling of both images and newsprint, and cardboard I collected outside shops on re-cycling day.
Below is some work in progress and my first mock-up book and wet prints ( hence funny angles of the photos trying to avoid shine)....

Similar to the ‘tarot’ cards, the underlying printed matter and images are sometimes clearly visible and sometimes almost completely obscured, with many stages in-between; but even when unreadable IT IS STILL THERE: a time capsule of our times.

Some unexpected and unintended juxtapositions arise. Each book is of course completely unique and the stories you read into them are your own.