Writing & Publishing
pictures with words
You can find a lot of my writing at www.modernistpunk.com where you can sign up to have it delivered to your inbox in the form of regular newsletters.
I've also written a few books:
Sliding
A book about image, collection and story.
As conservators of the discarded memory, it is a hobby, a collection, and somewhat of a responsibility. We are archivists by default.
We have a collection bordering on 5,000 slides form hundreds of different collections. Each one a portal into a past and an image resurrected every time it is illuminated.
We would, given the opportunity, share them all with you, but for the sake of brevity and trees, we embarked upon a curatorial process.
A Different North
It’s a direction, a place, an idea.
Maybe it is the iron in our blood that draws us North.
And when we find ourselves going in the opposite direction, do we bring it with us, or do we enjoy the fact that the further South you go, the more North you have?
This book combines the essays of Gillian Jane Lees and Adam York Gregory, written during their project, 'A Different North', which looked at the Different types of North present as they worked in the North of England. Spanning subjects such as food, architecture, industry and and music, A Different North started with the idea of searching for a unifying identity and discovered a multiplicity.
Live Art Cliches
Live Art Cliches is a collection of short essays about the live art world, starting with the title essay that considers the pitfalls of one of the most vibrant and urgent forms of making.
Published here as a companion to those just starting out on their live art practice as well as seasoned makers, who might wince a little as they encounter cliches they are also familiar with, Live Art Cliches looks at how we communicate through art.
Other essays consider when you should leave a performance, audience engagement, protest and art, the differences between visual and performative practice, and the business of a career in the arts.
Ex Vivo
A consideration on artistic collaboration within science and the role that representation plays in that relationship.
Two artists spent a year in residency in a biochemist's laboratory. They were supposed to learn about science, media and art, but what they found was as much about the representation of women in all three.
These books are available to purchase at www.adamandgillian.co.uk/shop or on Amazon.
I also have my own publishing imprint, inkCONCRETE, with a mission to help artists get their work into print, into libraries and into peoples hands.
Using modern methods of production to reduce financial and environmental costs, inkCONCRETE triesd to be a different method of publishing where the author keeps the copyright of the work in its entirety.
Here are two of the books I've worked on recently:
With Bread & Midnight Soup
by Leo Burtin
This publication is a companion to with bread, a performance where the History of bread meets personal histories of migration. Over the course of the live performance, audience members take part in making flatbreads which are served, along with a seasonal stew, at the end of the evening. The story told in with bread traces the journey of this staple and heavily symbolic food from prehistory to Brexit Britain, via biblical times and the Arab Spring. with bread is in turn a poetic history lesson, an opportunity to listen to voices from the margins, and a baking class. with bread is an attempt to explore what it means to share a culture, to make community and to belong in an ever-changing and globalised world. In the context of heated debates around identity politics, with bread brings people together in a joyous celebration of diversity and difference.
The Midnight Soup tells the story, of an unremarkable woman, who every day, sat down to meticulously record the facts of her life in a diary, until one summer day, she chose her own death. The Midnight Soup is the love letter of a grandson to his grandmother. It is also an edible memorial, celebrating a life lived to the rhythm of the seasons.
Women in Theatre
14 Monologues by 14 writers. Women & Work brings together monologues from three Women & Theatre productions written by fourteen female writers.Developed from conversations with inspirational women of different ages and backgrounds from across Birmingham. This accessible collection includes a rich and varied selection of contemporary monologues to be read, shared, debated, and performed. https://womenandtheatre.co.uk/shop/
