Zine Fair – my classmates made me do it !

Hi everyone,

After a hectic week I skipped the Book Festival on Saturday and was planning to do the same on Sunday and miss the Zine Fair at the MCA. However, after a couple of comments of my blog from classmates in the lvs blogging class I’m currently taking, I thought I’d better go.

There were many zinesters with stalls there.  My aim was to gather a small cross-section of the best zines & bring them home to see what I could learn about them. To see where to go from this oh-so time-consuming discipline of artist’s books.

First, I quickly looked around for the speakers from the Zine Masterclass, and spied Miss Helen, who was the tutor for the quick zine we all made there. I bought one of her zines, and another of a group she belongs to called the Grrrl Gang. Right next to Miss Helen was Vanessa Berry. This zinester was mentioned at the Masterclass as someone whose zines sell out, so naturally I bought one of hers also. I can see why they sell -she can write.

Then I had a look around.  Many of the stallholders looked like art students trying to make a few bob -(spoken as one who was an art student, less than a year ago). Looked at all the zines & was reminded again of my blogging class. We were asked ‘what is your authority to blog on this subject?’  I felt that many of the zines lacked authority in a big way.  Spelling mistakes.  Bad drawings. Badly reproduced photographs. Not that you have to be able to draw so well to be a zinester. It’s just better if you looked as if you’d made an effort.

However I saw a few to buy, and the selection in the picture is what I came home with.

My favourite is the small zine called ‘Cloud Television.’  It is produced by two young women called Emma Markala and Helen Nehill. As well as a website, Helen has a blog where you can see her wares all ready for the Zine Fair. I found Helen’s blog fascinating as she is obviously interested in urban landscape, and covers the same territory as I do. Helen can draw. And for me, who usually ignores the existence of poetry, I enjoyed reading Emma’s poems. But it’s not only that – it’s the way the zine was put together – the way the pages are laid out – the format with the spine at the top, instead of at the side. It shows that effort and thought went into it.   

So what else did I buy.

• Labour of  Love – from Storm Publishing. Though there’s a spelling mistake on their website, there are none in the zine.  The one I bought is called ‘Labour of Love’ – really a traditional comic, with jokes about pregnancy/babies. Not a subject of any interest to me, but it was a well-produced zine & good value for money.  
• Street Art (Did you Notice) – I bought this one for the content. It is just photographs of street art in both Sydney and Melbourne. A lot of the photos are from my area, and now I have to see if I can find all the art works.
• ‘Turtelly’ from Grrrl Gang. Turtelly is apparently ‘the way Americans pronounce ‘totally”. 
• A Stupidly Early Train Trip from Lofuts to Bondi Junction – Miss Helen.

Zines by zeniors

Last weekend I went to a Zine Master class at the Museum of Contemporary Art. What is a zine, you ask. It doesn’t rhyme with pine, but with magazine. Zines are photocopied, small issue (of maybe 10 or more) magazines.   Wikipedia describes it as “small circulation, non-commercial publication of original or appropriated texts and images”. It’s thought that the zine scene is mainly 15-year-olds, but that proved UNTRUE. While ‘zeniors’ is stretching it a bit, almost everyone there was over thirty, and some were a lot more than that.

Readers of my ‘old’ blog  will know that I make artist’s books. Though I like making them very much, it takes so looooong. Zines, I guess, are a ‘quick and dirty’ form of artist’s book. What is the difference? Well, there’s no difference really, according to one of the speakers.  For myself, I’d say that an artist’s book CAN be ‘unique’  whereas zines are always in an ‘edition’ (of more than one) – usually photocopied. 

There seemed to be a consensus among the speakers that zines are more creative and fresh than artist’s books. My personal view is that it depends which artist’s books you’ve been looking at.  ‘Fine binders’ concentrate on the craft of binding, and not on the content, so comparing that with zines is like comparing apples and oranges.  But zines are fun!  This weekend they will be having a Zine Fair at the MCA, as part of the Sydney Writers’ Festival. I plan to go. Participants in the masterclass were invited to bring along their zines to sell, and take part in the fair. I have my subject, my drawings,…….but no. Two jobs, two courses, and innumerable other things have prevented me from making a zine. Bad, aren’t I?  Should be able to make one in an hour. It’s just finding the hour.