Big Fag Press

A “Sweetapple Update”

For fans of Kate Sweetapple’s work, recently shown at UTS DABLab, the wait is almost over. We’ve been rolling out her Map of Sydney: Avian Surnames and Map of Sydney: Fish Surnames prints to those who pre-ordered copies. Above you can see Kate signing and numbering them in our workshop.

Those of you who ordered the Map of Sydney: Celestial Surnames or the set of all three prints will have to wait a little longer. Ever the perfectionist, Kate has decided to do a reprint on this one after noticing a way to improve the line quality in the final image. We’re planning to do this reprint next week, and we’ll be in touch when they’re done to let you know they’re on their way to you.

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.

Birds, Fish, Stars

DAB LAB research gallery invites you to celebrate Dr Kate Sweetapple’s exhibition opening:

Mr Salmon and Mrs Sparrow

An exposition comprising three brand new prints designed for, and lithographically stamped on the Big Fag Press, shewing a trio of cartographic representations of the fine metropolis of Sydney: the city as shaped by those inhabitants who are named by fish; those named by birds; and those whose names are celestially inspired, as printed by Dr Sweetapple herself in creative collaboration with the young gentlemen of the Big Fag Press, lately of Woolloomooloo.

Gala exhibition opening: Tuesday August 3, 6-8pm

for more info:
Debbie Pryor
Gallery Manager
DABLab
Level 4 courtyard, UTS
Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building
702 Harris Street, Ultimo
ph 95148016

Some photos of the prints in production, thanks to Firstdraft:

Prev|Next

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!

Lucas Ihlein’s Underground “Radish” print just released!

Hot off the press is this new print, made as a commemorative collectable to accompany the launch of the latest Artlink Magazine, themed on “The Underground”.

I had the privelege of guest-editing the magazine, and I was overwhelmed by all the stuff I COULD HAVE included, but was not able to. (You can read more about the contents of the magazine here).

So I decided to make a drawing documenting this failure to squeeze everything in.

Above the line you have (roughly) the contents of the magazine. Below the line you have all the things (well, not ALL) which didn’t make it in. Note the “etc” at the bottom right… It kind of comes out like an iceberg, but I also like to think of it as a radish (“the humble daikon”).

The print was produced as a run of 100, signed and numbered.

We used “dutch etching” paper, which printed really nicely, and the idea was to make it look a bit like the marker ink was bleeding into the fibres of the paper.

The print is now available online for only 70 Aussie dollars! Click here to visit our online store.

Get in quick as our editions often sell out fast.

-cheers, Lucas

UTS @ Big Fag Press

Over the last two weeks we ran a workshop with 3rd and 4th year UTS Visual Communication students, introducing them to the offset printing process and giving them some hands-on experience with our press. The project grew out of a workshop UK designer Jonathan Barnbrook held with the students at UTS when he was in town earlier this year for the opening of this year’s Biennale of Sydney. The subject was co-ordinated by Kate Sweetapple, a UTS lecturer who is no stranger to the press.

As a group, they produced a two-colour, eight-panel publication, which folded out to a 1020 × 700mm poster. Each student also printed a smaller individual poster in black or silver – these were printed four to a plate. There are tentative plans for a launch or exhibition later in the year – watch this space for details.

A few photos from our two printing days – for the rest, see this Flickr set.

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…