The Small Press Project is a collaboration between students and staff at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL and UCL Library Services. Now in its fourth year, the SPP uses the Small Press Collections (a public collection held in UCL Library Services’ Special Collections) as a unique historical framework within which we can scrutinise contemporary art practices.

This year’s theme, Visions of Protest: BLAKE THE MARCH, has been used as a critical lens through which we can focus on what connections exist between the democracy of print, their aesthetics and the autonomy of artists’ books and publishing. The project is formed through a programme of workshops, performances, screenings, talks, collaborations and interdisciplinary practices involving non-academic institutions and the public.

Visions of Protest: BLAKE THE MARCH is an ambitious and multifaceted project of optimism in adversity, of action, of challenge to hierarchy, of learning from the past to inform the future, of solidarity and resolve, and of using creativity to ignite change. It proposes an alternative space of enquiry to the social and political boundaries of gallery culture by exploring a shared and democratic approach to art making; one that addresses embedded inequalities and provides a forum to examine contemporary Small Press Publications in relation to their historical context, and to explore the medium as an autonomous art form; a way to disseminate, promote, share and distribute artwork; and as a container of ideas.

Schedule

8 March - SPP04/BTM Symposium
4 - 9 March - Workshops and performances

4 - 9 March

Small Press Project Event Week
Join us in banner-making through various print processes to include cyanotype, screen printing and hand cut stencils; collaborate in the production of a live risograph publication with Reading Room; construct a Visions of Protest poem with Sharon Morris; deface currency and passports with David Blackmore. Also included is a programme of film screenings.

All welcome.

Friday 8th March

Parade of the banners and posters to be spoken and sung by Slade students and staff: inspired by Blakes’ Europe a Prophecy, 1794, and generated through the Small Press Project.

Visions of Protest - 1.30pm - 5.00pm

1.30pm - Arrival of the banners
1.30pm - Screening October, 2011, 14mins video, Thomson & Craighead
1.45pm - Welcome
1.50pm - David Blackmore, V3ntur35 LTD 2017
2.00pm - Christopher Kirubi, Togetherness
2.25pm - Samia Malik Women of Colour Index Reading Group
2.50pm - Shama Khanna, Flatness

3.15pm - Tea and Coffee

3.35pm - Benedict Drew, Dyspraxia - The Antidote to Capitalism
3.50pm - Karen Di Franco, The Found Community of Carolee Schneeman
4.10pm - Robin Tarbet, Swap Edition 4 - BREX-kit
4.30pm - Jim Pennington, The Gestetner

Launch reception - 5.00pm - 8.00pm
Participatory Gestetner duplicating with Jim Pennington. Open to all.

Exhibition

Saturday 9th March, 11am - 4.30pm

Protest publications from UCL’s Special Collection & the Slade Archives
Swap Edition 4 - BREX-kit (with Robin Tarbet), and work from students and staff from the Slade School of Fine Art.

Screening
11.00 Persepolis (2007) 1hr 36mins

Performances
1 – 1:15 Bo Choy (duration 10 – 15mins)
1:25 1:40 Ruby Wroe (10 – 15) mins
1:50 – 2:00 Mataio Austin Dean (5 – 10 mins)
2:10 – 2:25 Taylor Doyle (10 – 15mins)
2:35 – 2:55 Mataio Austin Dean (20 mins)
3 .00 – 3:15 Writing Room Reading (15mins)

Participatory Activities
Reading Room
David Blackmore Passport erasing participatory performance. Bring your passport and take part!

Venue

Slade Research Centre
Slade School of Fine Art
UCL, Gower Street
WC1E 6BT

Download

Small Press Project 2019 report (pdf)

Instagram

@smallpressproject

The Small Press Project has been kindly supported by the Octagon
Award, UCL, IAS, Slade School of Fine Art and UCL Special Collections.