Description

‘Coracle Press: Notional’ is a publishing collaboration between Coracle Press and Artist Katie Holten.

“Notional looks and reads like Katie Holten’s sketchbook. Printed in blue ink on thick gray pages, the notes, drawings, diagrams, instructions, lists, occasional poems, definitions, and musings are accompanied by yellow post-it notes pasted right onto the page. The Butler Gallery described her work as “that of both dreamer and doer. Her proliferating drawings, which oscillate between crudeness and delicacy, the slapdash and the finely honed, resemble quasi-scientific schemata. They are graphic reminders of the purposeless, focus-free exhilaration of the act of imagining for its own sake. Her works recall the childhood pleasures of mapping out imaginary territories, of dreaming up impossible schemes, of escaping, however briefly, into a world of delicious fantasy.” This book distills that fantasy.”

Katie Holten via https://www.katieholten.com/new-page-1

About Coracle Press

Coracle Press is a small and completely individual publishing press which has been operating for over 35 years..  Writer and artist Erica Van Horn and poet, artist and editor Simon Cutts, direct it now from a small farm between the hills of South Tipperary, Ireland. They have been there since 1996. However, they began in London in the nineteen seventies, as publisher, gallery, and a space for books. Their last London book shop project project was ‘workfortheeyetodo’  in the mid-nineteen nineties. They also had a Norfolk connection. They worked out of a studio in Docking and between 1989-2012, printing many of their works from a printer, Crome and Akers, based in King’s Lynn.

From their remote spot in Ireland, they continue as printer-publisher, editor of spaces. They describe their practice as ’employing many of the devices and formats of hypothetical
publishing inherent in the small press’.  Their books have both critical and playful dimensions. But they are also steeped in poetry – they call it a residue of poetry – concerned with the mechanisms of the book as a manifestation of the poem itself. They are also mindful of their many collaborations  with other artists and writers, which evade any clear category.

Being open to new ideas and approaches marks all their projects. Limiting their scope or over-categorising their content or defining their range does not interest them. The books themselves are not so concerned with craft tradition, limited-ness of edition, hand-made paper or elaboration of binding. While each one has its unique character and appearance, what they want to achieve is the plain and simple case-bound book, the sewn paperback. They are working constantly at extending the category of ephemera. Making quirky visions, askance views, eccentric perceptions widely available is what they are all about.

Visit their blog at www.somewordsforlivinglocally.com