Big Fag Press

Stop the Press: the Allure of Ink – by Caren Florance

The following is an article written by our Canberra colleague Caren Florance, aka Ampersand Duck. It was commissioned by Big Fag Press co-director Lucas Ihlein for his UNDERGROUND edition of Artlink Magazine, launched in June 2010. Since it relates directly to the seizing of obselete printing technology by ratbags, we thought it germane to reprint here on the Big Fag website.
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Stop the Press: the Allure of Ink
Caren Florence, June 2010

[An early printing office (!), 1499 (from S.H. Steinberg, Five Hundred Years of Printing (UK: Pelican, 1955), plate A.]

There is something magical that happens to text when it is printed. In print, a scramble of handwritten words becomes solid, legible and above all, authoritative. Some of the most outrageous propaganda and religious doctrine throughout world history have been believed because they have been printed. Printing brings ideas to the surface and imbues them with power in a way that cannot ever be underestimated. Even these days, with so many ideas shared over the internet, there is still glamour and prestige in having your words transformed into printed matter: witness all the blogs that turn into books.

Printing, however, takes money, and distribution needs connections. When people want or need to share their ideas without the necessary money and connections, you get underground publishing, and ingenious methods of print production and distribution.
Continue reading…

Paul Saint prints up a Big Card on the Big Fag

We recently had the pleasure of working with eminent Sydney artist Paul Saint to print the above piece. Paul was a real pleasure to work with – he spent time getting his head around the process in advance, even carrying out the colour separations himself.

The final works – a sort of grooved and rotary-ruined playing card – is now on show at Artspace gallery in Woolloomooloo, not far from where we at Big Fag have our workshop in the First Draft Depot.

You can see a set of photos from Paul’s show here – the prints are exhibited en masse, and integrated into a large scale installation consisting of glass, wax, old comic book pages, mirrors and bent rulers.

This was something of a “pro-bono” job for Big Fag. Earlier this year, Artspace sponsored Big Fags Mickie and Diego to attend the Basel Art Fair, where we’d been invited to have a booth. (Read about their experience here ). So we were happy to support Paul’s Artspace print with free labour as hearty thanks for helping us get to Switzerland…

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