The Vancouver Art Book Fair - VA/BF

Anteism will be at the second annual Vancouver Art/Book Fair, a two-day festival that features nearly one hundred local, national and international publishers of art books, magazines, zines, printed ephemera and digital or other experimental forms of publication, as well as on-site programs, performances and installations. 

Free and open to the public, VA/BF is the only international art book fair in Canada and one of only two on the West Coast. 

Launching with a Reception at Project Space at 8pm on Friday, October 4, 2013, VA/BF will take place from 12pm to 5pm on October 5 and 6 at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

We are so happy to see this event happening in Vancouver. It filled a huge void on the West Coast. Come witness the early stages of an already blossoming world class art book fair. The first 250 people each day get a free tote bag! Come early. 

The Many Faces of Koyama Press

I was first introduced to Koyama Press through the comic book Lose #1 by Michael Deforge at the TCAF Festival in (2009? if memory serves...). It stood out from all the other professionally published comics I had seen, and opened up my eyes to a whole new world of indie comics - which I thought I knew . It was the art I loved, put into the format of a comic. Over the years I would find myself picking up art books and comics that drew my attention and noticed that they had been published by, or thanks to, Koyama Press. I felt similarities in Anteism's publishing platform to produce the work of emerging artists . After talking to many people who had worked with Annie Koyama and reading the thank-you's from the artists in the books I realized the work she was producing was much more than the sum of its parts. 

Lose #1 by Michael Deforge

Skip ahead a few years. Out of frustration for lack of venues to show art/books and simultaneously layed off of work and evicted from my home/studio, I decided to make the leap and follow through with an idea that I had for well over a decade. An idea introduced to me by a good friend Luke Ramsey who had submitted his zine to a mobile book library all those years ago.

It just so happened that I had six months of Employment Insurance and the good fortune of making an arrangement with a friend to donate a cube van. Over the course of this time the OuterSpace Mobile Gallery took shape, all the while ideas for shows and publications took form. 

One idea that felt important was to provide a venue (gallery format) to publishers. To exhibit a publishers books all together as a whole and to allow the viewers to experience the timeline and vision of a publishers endeavours. It allows the viewer to get an aesthetic understanding of the publishers tastes and would help to showcase links to artists often working in loose collectives. From zines to coffee table books, comics to photography this could be a focused art book fair, one publisher at a time.

It seemed fitting to send the initial exhibition invitation to Annie Koyama. It has been a great pleasure to put this show together, to witness the amazing work she has produced over the years for a new generation of emerging artists. As the rain and wind pummels Victoria I look forward to rolling open the truck door and sharing this work with the people out braving the elements over this weekend. 

The Many Faces of Koyama @ OuterSpace Gallery- September 2013

Brand New Website & Mobile Gallery

We've been very busy working on a couple of new projects. In fact we had to build a new website to combine everything into one platform. 

Photo by Luke Ramsey

We're excited to announce a new mobile art gallery called OuterSpace. OuterSpace will be an extension of our publishing platform, allowing us to have book launches, exhibitions and pop-up shops on the West Coast. For our first exhibition we selected the multifaceted artist James Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick produced an exhibition of paintings, a circuit bent electronic instrument and painted a mural on the side of the OuterSpace truck. View the artwork from the exhibition.

View of James Kirkpatrick's "Here and There"  exhibition from the stairs of the OuterSpace mobile Gallery.

A second project that is now coming together is an artbook series entitled "Lineage Editions". We showcased a prototype of our first publication at the opening of Kirkpatrick's exhibition. 

James Kirkpatrick's Blue Lineage Edition

The goal of the Lineage book series is to showcase artists in their work and daily environment. The photographic heavy publication will shed light on the artists process and way of life while producing a body of work. Utilizing snapshots, sketches, and snippets all mixed in with artworks in process. 

Four artists are chosen to begin the series. Each artist is designated a colour (blue, green, red or yellow). These colours become a lineage throughout the series. Once the book has been completed the published artist then selects the next artist who's work will be showcased in the following book. This book will fall under the same lineage or colour as the previous artist.

 This series is hand-bound with a die-cut cover and limited to an edition of 50. Available in our online shop very soon.