Elijah Harrison

Hand Bound: The Creation and Reception of Contemporary Canadian Artists' Publications

Hand Bound is a critical engagement with artists’ publications through researching, writing and making – it analyses contemporary work in this field while also acting as part of that work. The goal of the book is to find and position artists who are currently producing publication artworks in Canada, and to provide critical writing on these works so as to illuminate the relationships between them, the experiences of their development and reception, and their relevance as a medium, device, and way of making. It’s also to imagine and inspire what opportunities, ideas, collaborations, communities, and possibilities could grow out of artists’ publications – what they provide to us now, and what they could provide to us in the future.

“The material, structural, and design choices for this book were made to emphasize the artist’s hand as much as possible – books are made by hand to be held in the hand: the sensory experience that goes into the making is mirrored through the reader’s experience of engaging. This is where the title of the work comes from – the recognition that the ultimate destination and purpose of a publication is to be handled and engaged with.The book is bound with an Italian long stitch technique, chosen for the visible sewing on the spine – it draws attention to the hand-made quality of the work. The colour choices consider the book as a space or world with interior and exterior layers. I use postcard-like colour plates as a tie to documentary ephemera publication practices – the book is flexible or playful in its arrangement this way, and allows the reader to look at all the referenced artists’ works together. I chose a small size and printed with risograph as a call to my zine practice, where efficiency and economy are valued – but the covers are Tyvek, a durable and archival material made to last. These choices were made to mirror, demonstrate, and take part in the concepts highlighted within the book - the tangibility of labour through hand stitching, the book as a familiar and extendable system for communication, photography as a vehicle for everyday poetics, and the power of distribution and archiving.”