Category: ArtCircus Book

ArtCircus hardback book

FRAMED
Simon Taylor & John Robb

FRAMED
Manchester Photographed
1988–1993

Framed is a unique collection of photos (1988-1993) taken by Simon Taylor, a stalwart of the Manchester music scene, from the late 1980’s onwards.

Amazing photos from some truly memorable gigs are intertwined with stories, insider tales and anecdotes from Simon in conversation with renowned music journalist, musician, and TV personality John Robb. Including Simon’s story of how he helped to create the iconic cover with the lemons for The Stone Roses debut album.

From The Fall, The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays through to Kylie Minogue and Alice Cooper, there is a gem in here for everyone.

Hardback: 290 pages
Size: 280 x 210 mm
Price: £49.00
ISBN: 978-1-3999-6886-7

John Gardner
Pressed Flowers of Herefordshire and the Welsh Marches


Pressed Flowers of Hertfordshire John Gardner

This unique collection was made by John Gardner in the early 1970s, mainly in South Herefordshire but with a few additions from Gloucestershire and Radnorshire. It then lay forgotten for some fifty years. Now brought vividly to life, it gives a refreshingly unprofessional view of the flowers that we walk past every day in the countryside.
Each page is superbly photographed and each plant is given its colloquial and scientific names and there is information on traditional uses, unusual facts and features and poetic references.
John Gardner describes how the names originated and how the plants were viewed by the Greeks and Romans and by the great herbalists who studied them and what dangers, delights and eccentricities they uncovered and what caterpillars feed on them.
Hardback: 200 pages
Size: 280 x 220 mm
Price: £33.00
ISBN: 978-1-914424-04-5

The Art of Darkness
John Robb


The Art of Darkness by john Robb

Hardback: 548 pages
Size: 6 x 9 inches
Price: £25.00
ISBN: 978-1-526173-20-1

Agent X
2022


Alternative Film Posters A-Z
Jeremy Arblaster


Whether it's wider access to graphic design software, the intensification of fan culture on social media, or even IKEA's cheap frames, alternative film art has never been more popular. Fans pay homage to their favourite movies by creating unique posters, title cards or logos that highlight what attracts them to a particular film or filmmaker. By honing in on a specific idea or concept from the film, fan-made posters are as much works of art as works of appreciation; if you know, you know. There are some superb examples of 'alternative movie posters' (AMPs) to be found online, with websites such as AlternativeMoviePosters.com and PosterSpy.com offering a home for film art from talented designers and artists across the world.
Hardback: 148 pages
Size: 280 x 200 mm
Price: £30.00
ISBN: 978-1-913425-81-4

Sam Branton
Four Seasons



Four Seasons by Sam Branton

Four Seasons is a revised edition of Sam Branton's book - Three Seasons - a collection of drawings and paintings produced over the last five years based on the same underlying theme but divided into three distinct styles.

The underlying theme is a presentation of animals in unlikely settings or improbable pairings which results in a sometimes surreal and sometimes humerous impression on the viewer. Some of the images include references to animals in classical paintings but an essential feature of my work is to present animals in a playful rather than hostile setting.

The first season, Deluge, is a collection of tranquil monochrome drawings using red pencil. Most of these are drawn to a small scale and they are printed in the book at actual size. The drawings are set in neo-classical landscapes and they never quite tell the entire story, but should instead be considered as a frame or still image from a bigger story to be imagined or created by the viewer.

Season two, Holy Ground, is a collection of small oil paintings, building on the theme of animals in neo-classical landscapes and partial story telling but now introducing an extra element of mystery in some of the paintings by only showing a fragment of an entire painting. This was influenced by seeing remnants of images found in ancient remains in Greece and Italy which create a puzzle for historians to reimagine the complete original picture and the story being depicted.

Season three, Luciferase, builds on the Deluge theme, but now uses black pencil drawings to present the animals in a night-time setting using curious natural light sources to provide illumination. The monochrome images and lighting are sometimes used to create the illusion that the drawings represents a sculpture rather than living animals.
The endpapers in this book are taken from the triptych, Roses Within.
Hardback: 140 pages
Size: 270 x 270 mm
Price: £30.00
ISBN: 978-1-913425-75-3

Entanglement
Paul Knight


Entanglement by Paul Knight

When Paul invited me to write a foreword to his book, I had no idea what kind of book it was. I thought the front cover was an illustration; a detailed, rather gothic entanglement of flowers, but then realised that I was looking at a photograph. What followed was a phantasmagorical array of visual delights in this exceptional collection of still-life photography.

Each page is a work of art, assembled and constructed by the artist with startling emotional results.

The overarching concept that binds the pictures together is the quantum theory of entanglement, and the interconnectedness of each portrait sheds a thrilling light on this vast concept.

Flowers, thistles, weeds and dead insects are arranged with a consummate artistic skill to provide a single portrait. There is something historic and ancestral about them, like Old Masters but giving birth to an exciting new form. Birth, death, structure, chaos, fragility, and the stunning intricacies and beauty of a single dead and curled up petal. They evoke instant emotion; resonant, melancholy and exciting; this is an artist with something new to offer. Utterly original, each page is like a beautiful song on an inspired album that tenderly reminds us of the fragility, pain and beauty of the eternal wheel of life and death.

Doon Mackichan
Hardback: 110 pages
Size: 270 x 270 mm
Price: £25.00
ISBN: 978-1-913425-31-9

Stephen Markeson
Fleet Street Exposures



Fleet Street Exposures by Stephen Markeson

Foreword by Charles Wilson
Editor of The Times 1985-1990

The career of a Fleet Street photographer can be made or stalled in an instant…the millisecond it takes for the camera shutter to capture an iconic image that speaks a thousand words or just yet another frame destined to be discarded on the darkroom floor.
A Fleet Street reporter’s job is to find out what’s happened and then build a picture for readers by quoting eye witnesses, giving colourful description and detail…answering the questions who? what? where? why? when? and how? The photographer has either got ‘the picture’…or they haven’t.
As this wonderful diary shows Stephen Markeson demonstrates both areas of expertise and has produced an elegant, fascinating and surprising record of his career in pictures.
The great 20th century American photographer, Ansel Adams, once said ‘There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.’
I think he meant that, like beauty, many images may only find their greatness in the eye of the beholder.
I suspect that while many of the images in this impressive book will move, intrigue, fascinate, amuse and startle, many will also remain with most of us…as often as we choose to dip into the world of such an accomplished photojournalist.
Stephen allows the photographs to speak for themselves but brilliantly lets us in on some of the circumstances, opportunities and fortune that framed the story behind the story.
For most of my Fleet Street life, pictures could only be printed in black and white and there is something more compelling, artistic and engaging in monochrome. And boy did this book bring back memories.
Hardback: 168 pages
Size: 270 x 270 mm
Price: £30.00
ISBN: 978-1-914424-16-8

Alan Kestner
Swimming Against The Tide


Swimming Against The tide by Alan Kestner

Book produced for the Exhibition
Swimming Against The Tide
At the Poolhaus Gallery in Hamburg
Hardback: 88 pages
Size: 270 x 270 mm
Price: £25.00
ISBN: 978-1-914424-28-1