Bookmarks VIII : Escaping the Library System

Bookmarks VIII : Escaping the Library System

At 23 Sandy Now through February 2011

The Bookmarks projects series is curated by 23 Sandy Gallery artist Sarah Bodman who is a book arts research fellow at the University of the West of England. With this unique project Sarah’s aim is to encourage appreciation of work in the format of the artist's book. Participating artists each hand-produce an edition of 100 signed and numbered bookmarks to give away through distribution boxes at venues around the world. Each bookmark has the website address which brings visitors to the gallery of artworks online.

Over the last six years the Bookmarks series of free artwork distribution has visited 60 venues in Italy, The Netherlands, the UK, Ireland, France, Denmark, Germany, Poland, Singapore, Turkey, New Zealand, Canada, Brazil, South Korea, Cyprus, Croatia, New Zealand, Japan, Australia and the USA. Over 280 artists have contributed more than 28,000 bookmarks to the eight projects to date.

Editioned bookmarks are collated into sets; one full set being sent to each of the contributing artists and the rest divided and sent in distribution boxes to participating galleries, bookstores and libraries around the world, for visitors to take for free.

Bookmarks VIII Escaping the Library System 2010-2011 - has a twist - this time, it was library staff making them rather than distributing them. Quite a few previous bookmarks makers have been librarians, so Sarah thought she would ask library workers to infiltrate some non-library venues with their own bookmarks.

23 Sandy is thrilled to be a distribution venue for the librarian bookmarks. Each month, through February we will put out a new batch of bookmarks. So, stop by and take your pick from this inspiring, community-building project.