The Book of the Erinyes

Yes­ter­day I spent the day in Lon­don doing a whistle-stop tour of a few exhib­i­tions as back­ground research for the Book of the Erinyes.

Book­bind­ing at the V&A

First stop was the V&A in South Kens­ing­ton to see a small dis­play of Fine Bind­ings for the Man Booker Prize 2009 designed by the Soci­ety of Designer Bookbinders.

It’s only a small dis­play (6 books) but it’s well worth see­ing these bind­ings “in the flesh” as they’re great. The dis­play can be found in Room 74 (20^th Cen­tury sec­tion) of the V&A until 21^st March 2010, and admis­sion is free.

The bind­ing illus­trated here is by Rachel Ward-Sale. More inform­a­tion about all six bind­ings, their bind­ers, and the tech­niques & mater­i­als used can be found on the Soci­ety of Designer Book­bind­ers web­site.

Ctrl.Alt.Shift Unmasks Corruption

After the V&A I headed up to Soho to see Ctrl.Alt.Shift Unmasks Cor­rup­tion at the Laz­ar­ides Gal­lery in Greek Street — an exhib­i­tion of polit­ical comic book and graphic novel work by artists and writers includ­ing Dave McK­ean, Pat Mills, Peter Kuper, Janek Koza, Dan Gold­man, and pop cul­ture fig­ures Light­speed Cham­pion and V V Brown.

I’m par­tic­u­larly fond of Dave McKean’s artwork—especially the mag­ni­fi­cent Sand­man covers—so it was great to see some of his larger-scale col­lages close-up.  His art­work on dis­play was about the wide­spread cor­rup­tion sur­round­ing AIDS relief to vil­lages in China.

Ctrl.Alt.Shift Unmasks Cor­rup­tion is on until 28^th Novem­ber 2009 at the Laz­ar­ides Gal­lery, Greek Street, Lon­don.  Admis­sion is free.