THE IRREGULAR BULLETIN
the drawing shed co-authored The Irregular Bulletin a contemporary arts project using its iconic PrintBike – a mobile pop up printmaking studio activated by it’s sponsored Brompton Fold-up and artists Bobby Lloyd, Sally Labern, and Joseph Kopiel. Space Studios and Arlington were our funding partners. Arlington provides temporary hostel accommodation and services for homeless people.
The artists consistently led and supported the workshops with Arlington residents, creating a community workshop atmosphere around the ideological concept of ‘The Irregular Bulletin’ – inspired by and rethinking the work of avant garde artists and drawing from popular culture and radical forms of poetry, [lending a contemporary take on William Burroughs Cut-Ups, John Cage ‘s Rules, Corita Kent’s Open Studio ethos]. Here the ‘making and re-making’ of rules allows us to work with whatever is brought into The Creative Space in Space Studios: Studio5 by residents taking part.
Corita Kent, John Cage and William Burroughs were working and active during at the height of the Civil Rights Movement and the anti vietnam war campaigns in the 60’s. Sister Corita’s community screen print workshop with a pop up community cafe open to everyone and this became the hub for discussion, art making, teaching, the making of new rules, and shared community actions.
the drawing shed’s exhibition of The Irregular Bulletin at Arlington on 18th and 19th July 2013 as part of The Creative Space project, took the form of placards carrying screen printed image and text created with residents as both a personal and political take on the world, alongside a pop up café during the Private View in partnership with City Dining, and the more thoughtful and profoundly beautiful series of ‘lost prints’; These are created from the residual traces left on each screen as the prints are pulled. Some of these prints on A1 archive quality tissue reflect the fragility, resilience and endurance of participants and The Irregular Bulletin as the contemporary form chosen by the artists.
PrintBike itself was transformed into a huge lightbox; The Irregular Bulletin format mirroring the ad hoc lightbox created by a resident during a workshop, and showed a series of hand screened multiple prints on foolscap tracing paper.
Paper Stencils as multiple objects of the vast number of prints created throughout this project flooded over one wall of the Creative Space itself so that visitors can get a live sense of Space Studio’s Studio5 as The Irregular Bulletin space.