EAST LONDON LINE & THE WHITECHAPEL

Here is a limited edition typographical print which I've been producing to launch my new poetic photobook The East London Line at the Whitechapel Art Book Fair (Thursday 23rd to Sunday 26th September). The large-format softback book, under my imprint Altazimuth Press, will be in a limited edition of 100.

I've been producing the print on my wooden 'common press', a replica of an 18th century press, and as the press is a two-pull press, and therefore has a small platen, I have to pull and wind-on two or three times to obtain one print.

The print is composed in metal type and wood letter on the stone bed of the press. I will have some for sale at the Whitechapel, along with the book, and also a few of my limited edition typographical map, printed in black, red and blue, also entitled the East London Line (see an earlier post).

East London Line typographic / cartographic print

This is a proof of my new East London Line typographic / cartographic limited edition print. I set the type on Friday and Saturday, and proofed it on Sunday. It's also a typographic experiment towards my East London Line book, which I will launch at the Whitechapel Art Book Fair in September.

This print celebrates the reopening of the East London Line (which has now been subsumed into the 'Overground' system), but is also intended to preserve the memory of the old East London Line, as well as the London, Surrey, West Indai, East India and other Docks and the working class communities of the areas covered. Action by government, local authorities and developers (nowadays called 'regeneration') has, since the war, erased whole areas of the old London. They have done more damage than Hitler's bombs.

Artwave, and Paine's Case of the Officers of Excise

I'm demonstrating the printing press (the wooden common press) in the Market Tower, Lewes, during Lewes's Artwave Festival every afternoon from Friday 28 August to Friday 4 September inclusive.

As well as the Tom paine material, I'm also using the press to print the text and blocks of some of my own artist's poem & image books, including Rosenberg (the Whitechapel poet and artist, who was killed in the First World War), and The East London Line (inspired by the current redevelopment of the old East London Railway from Shoreditch through (or rather under) Whitechapel, Shadwell, Wapping, Rotherhithe and Surrey Docks to New Cross and New Cross Gate).