Joe Devlin: Bookmarks at The Portico Library
Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature Editor
We love a library, we ain’t gonna lie, so when we heard that Joe Devlin’s modified bookmarks had found a home in the pop-up display area of the Portico, well…
Joe Devlin is a fan of things like dog ears (turning the paper down as a page-holder) and inclusions (the ephemera found in books – see author Nicholas Royle‘s most recent tome Shadow Lines for more on this).
Devlin is behind North Manchester-based independent press Nuts and Bolts, which aims to publish “books that, in some way, reference the physicality of the printed object. Utilising the book, and the language often associated to describe/define them, as triggers for new publications”. In other words, his interest is in materiality as a source of content, from faded covers to altered endpapers, marginalia and graffitied pages to re-appropriated content. Nuts and Bolts (N. B.) creates publications that employ all these – it also creates bookmarks.
Completely unsolicited, the writer Michael Hampton (The White Review, Art Monthly, Frieze, Shearsman) recently returned a modified N. B. bookmark to Devlin, which prompted the publisher to contact a further 22 artists with the request to each modify a bookmark.
Artists from around the globe have responded to the callout, including Claudia de la Torre (back bone books, Berlin), David Bellingham (Wax 366, Glasgow), David Osbaldeston, Nina Chua, Daniella Watson Hughes and Matthew Houlding. The collection also features pieces by some of our favourite concrete poets and vispo practitioners Derek Beaulieu (No press, Canada), Greg Thomas (of the ‘Candle Poems’) and Imogen Reid (Rossi Contemporary).
While you’re there, do take the time to look at the Weird as Folk exhibition, which is rather wonderful, too.
