This October Emily Carr University Library and READ Books at the Charles H. Scott Gallery present Jo Cook for our 2016 Artists’ Books Research Residency (ABRRR).

ABRRR Events

Lunchtime Talk in the ECU Library
Wednesday, October 5, 12:00 pm

ABRRR Lecture
Anecdoted Marginalia: The Inner Life of a Library
Thursday, Oct 13, 7:30pm, North Building room 245

Workshop at READ
Adore-Abhor: Writing Other Peoples Words
Saturdays, October 22 and 29, 1:00 – 4:00 pm

Jo Cook is an artist publisher living on Mayne Island, BC. In 2005, she founded Perro Verlag Books by Artists, a press that recognizes the importance of unstable thoughts and impractical, possibly visionary intentions. Since then she's published 110 titles ranging from stapled photocopied zines to full colour perfect bound books. 

Cook purchased her first artist's book at Printed Matter in New York in 1978. Since then she has built a vast collections of zines, comix, artists books, posters, flyers &c. from all over. In 2004 she curated (self)Publish or Perish for Open Space in Victoria, Cyclops Dreams (with Owen Plummer) for Access Gallery, and Tales from the Cyclops Library for Third Space Gallery in St John. She has organized many small exhibitions at Lucky's Comics and the lowercase reading room in Vancouver.

The artist will be in the library most weekdays in October from 10 am to 4 pm and will give a lunchtime talk in the library on Wednesday, October 5th. She will present a lecture titled Anecdoted Marginalia, The Inner Life of a Library on Thursday, October 13 at 7:30 pm. Cook will discuss the significance of annotation and marginalia and consider bibliomania, phobias and synchronicity in relation to the books in the library of the British artist Helen Chadwick, along with the books in her own library. She will lead a two session workshop in READ on appropriation as text generator. Participants will combine cut-ups of magazine interviews and use Richard Foreman’s on-line notebooks to produce a new form of interview zine. The workshop will take place on two Saturday afternoons, October 22 and 29 from 1:00 - 4:00 pm.