Our current display in ECA Library, Evolution House, on the archive of Fluxus artist Takako Saitō, will close on 25th August 2025. Following that, our next display will explore the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay in his centenary year. This display will open on 1st September and will continue until 30th November 2025.
Our new display at ECA Library, Evolution House, level 1, features works by three of the winners of the 2024 Bookmarks Prize.
The Bookmarks Prize is awarded to selected graduates for high quality and innovative use of the book form shown at the Edinburgh College of Art Graduate Shows. It is open to all students across the Schools of Art and Design.
Jane Hyslop, Lecturer in Painting & Illustration at ECA, who curated this display says “In 2024 it was a pleasure to select three graduates to receive the award: Daniyyel Ironside (School of Art, Intermedia), Charlotte Brooke Simm (School of Design, Textiles) and Honor Dodd (School of Design, Jewellery).
The prize itself offered the opportunity to showcase work at BOOKMARKS 2025 which was held at Edinburgh College of Art in March 2025.”
The shortlist of prize winners was as follows:
Honor Dodd – BA (Hons) Jewellery
Daniyyel Ironside – BA (Hons) Intermedia
Charlotte Brooke Simm – BA (Hons) Textiles
Aner Wang -BA (Hons) Illustration
& Commended Collective:
SPRITZ – Flora Luckman, Ally McKay, Lucy Parker, BA (Hons) Illustration.
The display will continue until 11th May 2025, and is accessible to the public, Monday – Friday, 9.00am – 4.45pm.
Make your way to the ECA Sculpture Court at Lauriston campus Main Building from 1.00pm to 7.00pm to enjoy the annual ECA Bookmarks Bookfair! Your opportunity to buy prints, zines, artists’ books, cards, pin badges, t-shirts and other wonders made by our ECA Art and Design students, and friends from Scottish colleges and arts organisations.
Poster art by Rosie Wang, ECA Illustration student, rosieee_art on Insta…
We wish all our students and staff a very productive semester 2, and invite you to come along to ECA Library to enjoy our new display of book works by artist and print maker Susie Wilson.
We are fortunate to have several artists’ books in our collection by Susie, in addition to the major boxed work she created in response to her residency at ECA library in 2016.
The works featured are:
Cabinet on left:
1: Flutter, Edinburgh, 2011
2: Inside Outside, Edinburgh, 2011
3: Hidden Inside, Edinburgh, 2011
4: Tunnel, Edinburgh, 2011
5: Insect Life, Edinburgh, 2011
Cabinet on right:
6: Untitled, Edinburgh, 2016
For more information about Susie’s work click here. [This display has now closed.]
Our new display explores journeys to islands both real and imaginary, centering on Voyage Boxed: sea journeys, island hopping & trans-oceanic concepts, by Imi Maufe and others, (2014), and including in addition, an Atlas of Remote Islands, by Judith Schalansky (2010), The Fascinating secrets of oceans and islands, (Reader’s Digest Association, 1972) Archipelago: an atlas of imagined islands, by Huw Lewis-Jones (2019) and Dreaming the Gokstadt: northern lands and islands, Thomas Joshua Cooper, (1988).
Our display at ECA Library focuses on book works by artist Jane Hyslop, including a recent acquisition: The Oak Tree: a tribute to eternity.
Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando, a biography, and spanning over 700 years, The Oak Tree: a tribute to eternity weaves historical and contemporary fact with fiction, and marks the pivotal point at which we now find ourselves in the face of climate change and declining biodiversity. It follows Woolf’s groundbreaking novel in drawing attention to the very moment of the present, while urging us to look to the future.
Taking the form of an imagined visual edition of the manuscript the eponymous character writes throughout the novel, the artist’s book is accompanied by an introduction and notes written in collaboration with Professor Bryony Randall.
Other works featured in the display include Edinburgh: a visual handbook, 2007, and An Experiment, 2010.
The display closes on 5th November.
Bookmarks 2024 took place at ECA on Wednesday 27th March from 1.00pm to 7.00pm at the ECA Sculpture Court.
This annual event is a fantastic opportunity to meet artists’ books and zines makers, buy and swap stuff, and attend workshops!
Check out the new ECA website for more info.
11 January 2024:
ECA Library is delighted to host a new display featuring works by Julie Johnstone of Essence Press, and Alan Shipway, painter. Julie has long been drawn to the painter Agnes Martin (1912-2004). For this project she decided to address her interest in Agnes Martin directly, in order to see the body of work that might result when Martin’s life and work ‘met’ her own practice. She was interested in asking what it was that draws us to a particular painter or work of art – that affinity or resonance one feels – and how one might be inspired by that. Also on display are two watercolours by Alan Shipway who is also an admirer of Agnes Martin.
The show is open now until the end of February 2024.
Please do come along to ECA Library, level 1 of Evolution House, West Port, to take a look at our 3 display cabinets and the wonderful works inside.
NB: Evolution House is open to the public Monday – Friday, 9.00am – 4.45pm only. Sometimes our reception needs to close over lunchtime, at short notice, so please either phone ahead to check the building is open or arrive between 9am and 12, or 2pm and 4pm. You can reach ECA Library on 0131 651 5700. Thank you!
For more information go to the Essence Press website
The ECA Library artists’ books collection includes an extensive range of bookworks by Julie Johnstone and the Essence Press. This display features fourteen works from 2006 to 2020.
From 8th September until 7th November 2023 we were delighted to host sidereal. the afterimage, presenting a selection of work from ~ sidereal. the afterimage, by Barbara A. Morton of Entropie Books.
sidereal. the afterimage
~ sidereal. the afterimage is a new chapter of creative composition by Barbara A Morton.
The exhibition takes its title from the distinctive signature piece ~ sidereal. the
afterimage which achieves an extension of intention and originality in the
expression of poetry, book-making, drawing, and design.
The accompanying pieces, likewise, demonstrate ambition and creative reach,
both technically and imaginatively, and serve to maintain and develop Barbara’s
ongoing purpose of bringing poetry and poetic text to its aesthetic and accurate
environment ~ to encourage the reader to look, and to encourage the viewer to
read. To look closely. To look again. To look ~ for longer.
The show was at ECA Library, Evolution House (level 1), West Port, Edinburgh, until noon on 7th November 2023. Evolution House is open to the public Monday – Friday, 9.00am – 4.45pm.
