Big Fag Press

Big Fag on Aunty’s ‘Art Nation’

A few weeks back, Fennella Kernebone and crew from the ABC dropped by the Depot after having interviewed Big Fags Lucas and Diego about their work in the MCA’s recently-opened show, In The Balance: Art For A Changing World. As part of Lucas’s Environmental Audit project, he is printing a diagram a week on various environmental considerations that surround art and the exhibition process.

The footage has now been edited together into a story and is up online for viewing – you can see Lucas, Diego, and several other people involved in the exhibition talk about their work, and there’s a few seconds of the press in there too!

Our Melbourne Friends in the news

There’s a great little feature entitled “Keeping craftsmanship alive”, by Peter Kohn, all about Melbourne Museum of Printing and Australian Print Workshop on the Proprint Magazine website, June 2010.

Depot Official Launch!

If you’ve ever been curious about the press and wanted to get a closer look or see it in action, this Saturday is your chance! Firstdraft are officially launching their Firstdraft Depot studio/residency complex, and as part of the day we’ll have the roller door up and be printing from midday till 2pm.

We’ll be doing a reprint of Kate Sweetapple’s “Map of Avian Surnames” for her upcoming show “Mr Salmon and Mrs Sparrow” at the DAB Lab gallery at UTS.

See Firstdraft’s Depot site for more information, or just have a read of the flyer below.

See you Saturday!

looking around

Well well, there is a lot of big names, big galleries and big projects around here.

We manage to take turns to be able to see the rest of this art-economy kermesse, Mick going to listen to a talk by Paul McCarthy, introducing himself as the guy who graffitied his work, but i’ll let him brag about that on his own blog.

I myself slowly working my way around, a little at a the time, in digestible doses, through out the enormity of the fair.

I’d like to feature down here one of the works I pulled out from the crowd, by Lara Almarcegui, Spanish artist who I met last year, and with whom I shared a joint exhibition in Torino.

This work might be of great interest to another fellow BigFagger, Lucas, but will let him brag about that in his own blog too.

As far as our (BigFag) art then we keep talking to amazing people. Mentionable are the rest of the exhibitors of OffPress (see list previous post) and other print enthusiats, like this guy who approached by saying that he just had to sell off his own FAG the other day, because his small scale printing venture could not afford anymore the real eastate it occupied, he was very glad to know we keep our machine going, and he said lots of great things about the press he owned and the mechanical mastery behind it. So good, so passionate about a machine that unfortunately just became industry-redundant..

More to come

Tchuss!

A practical way to sell prints

update!
We arrived in Basel and realised we didnt organize ourselves for packaging the prints we’d like to sell and subsidise our Swiss venture with.

So Mick went off to Die Post to get some solutions, practical ones!

So far not much to say about the ‘biggest Art Fair in the world’, we just went through the A list invitation-only opening yesterday, with a few people stopping by between a drinking networking section and another to be puzzled by our rather loud shirts “BIG FAG”, which incidentally turned up to be our best viral marketing strategy yet!

Anyway, the second day is starting, media preview day, so back behind the desk!

More to come, more images on this flickr.
Tschüss

Big Fag Press at Art Basel

[The Boss at the Art Fair, day one...]

Big Fag Press is off to Switzerland for the Basel Art Fair.
Yes, it’s (strange but) true!

Today, our Big Fags (Diego and Mickie) arrived in Europe. Tonight they will slick their hair back and press the flesh at the world’s fanciest zine fair.

We’ve brought some terrific prints with us to show and sell, and we’ll be looking to meet and some excellent artists and talk about the prospect of printing even more lithographic editions!

The opportunity to exhibit in Basel came about earlier this year at a meeting we had with Lionel Bovier, a Swiss art book publishing maven.

Lionel was so impressed by the absurd story of our adaptive re-use of our 4 tonne machine that he invited us to participate in a special exhibition entitled “OFF PRESS” at the Basel Art Fair.

Our meeting with Lionel Bovier was organised by Artspace, Sydney. In turn, Artspace was kind enough to sponsor our visit to Switzerland by covering an airfare and freight.

Here’s some more info about OFF PRESS:

The first Off Press presentation focuses on publishers and structures that literally or conceptually re-appropriate their means of production, i.e. acquiring small press facilities or devices, developing programs using new and old technological possibilities and defining a new zeitgeist in contemporary publishing. These presses are often small, artist or designer-run, and marked by a new take on the DIY aesthetics.

(From Art Basel‘s website)

The participants in the OFF PRESS exhibition include:

• Bedford Press & AA Bookshop, London
• Big Fag Press, Sydney
• Lubok Verlag, Leipzig
• Nieves, Zürich
• onestar press, Paris
• Rollo Press, Zürich
• True True True, Amsterdam
• Werkplaats Typografie, Arnhem

Incidentally, the Big Fag Press itself is originally Swiss, a fact celebrated in this print.

We’re hoping while he’s in that most neutral of nations, our man Mickie will get the chance to visit the FAG HQ in Lausanne (near Geneva), where our precious monster was born all those years ago…

LIVEZINE PRINTACULAR a big success!

The Fagette Duplicator, recently acquired “little sister of the big fag press” was launched last week at the LiveZine Printacular Event.

The night was a big success, we raised some sorely-needed funds to go towards paying off the machine, and a hilarious evening was had by all. See more pictures here.

The above picture shows Pam and Michael from Imagetec showing Sarah the ropes on the new riso machine. Imagetec sold us the printer, and have been super-supportive in helping us get it up and running, not to mention showering us with free accessories.

Incidentally, if anyone is interested and inspired to get involved, the Fagette still needs fund-injections to help get it on its feet. Please do get in touch if you’d like to give or lend us some cash to support DIY printing in Sydney!

The FAGETTE Livezine Printacular!!

The BIG FAG PRESS now has a little sister, the Fagette Duplicator. Where the BIG FAG is optimised for slowness, and bigness, the Fagette is super for quick and small. What’s more, it’s easy to use, and prints in a glorious array of multi-colour. Ya gotta see this baby in operation! Which brings us to…

The Fagette LiveZINE Spectacular!

Fagette LiveZINE – making the stage a page! The LiveZINE is an infotainment printacular – with audience and presenters alike contributing to an instantaneously published magazine. Expect to be entertained, challenged, inspired, and take home your own copy of the LiveZINE at the end of the night!

The LiveZINE brings together performers, pop music samplers, cartoonists, zinesters, big minds and the terminally curious for a huge night of entertainment. Come one, come all!

Come and join us on the PACT Theatre bleachers. Make history!

Print where no printer has ever dared to print before!

17th June PACT Theatre.
107 Railway Pde Erskineville
Tues 17 June 2008, 8pm
$7 and cheap drinks!
www.fagette.net

Backgammon games night at SYDNEY to raise funds for the Fagette Duplicator

Backgammon Saloon
8pm TUES 3rd June ‘08
Sydney, 302 Cleveland Street, Sth West Surry Hills

The backgammon Saloon is a super fun night with lots of backgammon, consuming a whole bunch of alcohol (or turkish tee if you dont want to drink) and an outlandish performance. We’ve made a whole lot of screenprinted backgammon boards, a rules of play instruction sheet and also made backgammon pieces by spray painting beer caps for the evening.

There will be backgammon sets and tshirts for sale on the evening to raise money for the Fagette Duplicator!

For more information see below for a description of the Fagette Duplicator. Also be sure to check out the SYDNEY website http://www.officialsydney.com and the Fagette Duplicator site http://www.fagette.net

The Fagette Duplicator: Little sister of The Big Fag, and the bastard child of social media!

The Fagette is a ’stencil press’ that prints a unique and beautiful quality. Stencil presses are best known to most of us through the old Gestetner machines that once sat in the offices of our schools before the photocopier came along. These machines are still used in many schools and churches however the technology has dramatically improved. Stencil presses are now digital, multi-colour, high definition, and incredibly fast, making them ideal for just-in-time, fast, and easy printed matter. From book-making to printing zines, posters and flyers, The Fagette Duplicator will deliver again and again and again – and again.
The Fagette IS social media involving arts-anti-heroes, metropolitan activists, underground writers, urban researchers, garage rockers and self-publishers of all walks.

The home of The Fagette is Little Fish Gallery at 22 Enmore Rd. Come by and have a look!

Big Brochure Launch a Big Success

The launch of our big brochure was a big success! We sold out of our “first printing” brochures, with a list of orders for the second printing. They are now available so contact us if you would like to buy one (they are ten dollars each, and feature a bonus B1 sized collectable poster -see images above and below).

Meanwhile, the brochure is online page by page as images here. Click on each page to advance forward.