Beau Bookbinding at Rodeo Gallery, London..
Michaela MJCP
Banu Cennetoğlu /
GENTLE MADNESS
11 October – 29 November 2014
We were asked by artist Banu Cennetoğlu to bind a series of books for her upcoming exhibition “Gentle Madness” and, as Banu regularly works with books in her projects, were happy to help. Our brief was to construct 46 books from a selection of newspapers collected all on the same date: 4th September 2014. All of the books were to look identical with the material for the covers, same dimensions and to have the same gold lettering with the exception of each binding to have its own number and title.
As this was quite a unique request there were a few things to consider when binding. The biggest challenge was to bind the books to all to be the same size as the newspapers had been printed, folded and trimmed differently to one another. It was also important to try and not loose as much of the text as possible and, as these were single sheet bindings (where we cut the spines and sewn down the margin), this was also a little tricky. What we did was find an average size where a majority of the newspapers would fit comfortably and to trim any slightly larger papers by hand to avoid losing the text. Larger newspapers were folded instead and through strategic and carefully cutting and lining the pages we were able to create a consistent size across a majority of the books.
The covers had gold lettering and needed to be as uniform as possible so that when the books were stacked next to one another the lettering would line up. The title of the books “04.09.2014” was the same across all the books except for the edition number and the alphabetized title on the bottom of the spine, which were all unique to the binding. This was a little tricky but with a lot of double measuring we were able to achieve this as well.
The project explores how local newsworthy topics and stories change from region to region in the UK and presents the difference between attitudes through archiving and binding these newspapers together for the reader to explore. Be sure to have a look at Banu’s exhibition “Gentle Madness” open from the 11th October to the 29th November 2014 at the Rodeo gallery.
