Waygood provided Bookville with a space in a disused hairdressers for four months. Primarily conceived as a bookshop, Bookville put on over 40 events and supported over 100 artists – including live music, workshops, day residencies, exhibitions a week long performance festival, readings and sleepovers. This was supported by both the Waygood Gallery and Arts Council England.
01 FEB BOOKVILLE OPENS
The famous Bookville book cake with crayon candles, by Wendy.
The first exhibition, by Simon Jones, included a series of large prints of closeups of crisps and a collection of objet d'art on two shelves.
Visitors to the shop on the opening night had to make their way through all the red tape.
Before it was Bookville, 37 High Bridge was a hairdressers. This meant a plethora of hair related events, including free haircuts. I did my first ever performance on the opening night where Mags painted my hair then Mat Cowan organised the blighters to turn me upside-down and use me as a human paintbrush!
02 - 05 FEB RUDEBOY NOAH READS ENTIRE MOBY DICK
It took Noah a good three days hard reading to finish the entire of Moby Dick. Read out loud almost to himself in a damp, dank and hairy basement.
03 FEB MAGGIE GETS COMPLETELY WRAPPED UP
Maggie stayed out in the cold all day getting slowly wrapped up in horrible sticky tape, while charvas came in and nicked my camera!
05 FEB POTATO PRINT WORKSHOP
I led a potato print workshop and produced a little book with Mags, James J-P & RudeboyNoah. We made the a little book with odd socks in it called ODD [below].
07 FEB SLUMBER PARTY + GHOST STORIES
One of the coldest nights I can remember. Cold February, cold basement. We did it for my birthday which happened to have Shrove Tuesday after, so it was pancakes for breakfast.
Earlier in the day the charming Hector & Glen [who I later did a gig with at the London Artist's Book Fair] came up from London to see me on my birthday. They left a collage of copies on our wall... [below]
14 FEB VALENTINE'S DAY READINGS & PERFORMANCE
Mags & Debs organised this mix up of reading dirty love poems & performance around a big double bed in the centre of the room. I read out some stuff, as did RudeboyNoah & Alec Finlay. One guy also read out the sweets from an entire pack of love hearts as he ate them, wrote them down and pinned up the poem on the wall.
12 - 18 FEB EUROPEAN ANIMAL
The noble European Animal stepped in at the last minute to fill a gap & what filling they provided! Decorating practically the entire space with an array of curious little characters!
19 FEB BOOKBURNING WITH MAT COWAN
Saturday the 19th of February saw Mat Cowan lead a book burning with a difference.
23 FEB DJ CALLAN
Christopher Smith AKA DJ Callan, brought his protable record player in a few times during Bookville on High Bridge & was the original inspiration for Creamola Foam.
24 FEB JOE SCURFIELD
Rest In Peace Joe. No one came, the bastards - too cold, no beer, probably a bit too weird for some random weekday. But we who were there, well...
25 FEB & 6 MAY JAZZ IN THE SHOP
We invited a Jazz band to come and play in the shop a couple of times during the day while people browsed around and did things. Nice.
26 FEB STORY TELLING WITH GARY CORDINGLEY
Lovely ex-fireman Gary Cordingley was spotted telling stories at the Cumberland Arms and was asked to give a day residency, giving stories to our guests and customers.
27 FEB - 06 MAR INTERNATIONAL WEEK
The Artists arrive: Marieke Haandrikman, Floor Van Slochteren, Nina Boas [NL], Jeff Koh [CA] & Sabrina Basten [DE] all came off the ferry from North Shields. We were joined later in the week by Cian McConn [ROI] who made t-shirts for people.
The Art-Is-Dinner was organised for that Friday and was an opportunity for people to meet the artists and see their work [there were several live pieces, see above].
Jan Voss from Boekie Woekie never made it.
15 MAR A.J.BUMPUS
Andy Bumpus did a residency & exhibition in the space where he produced some beautiful collages, posters and videos. He also did artwork for a book which I helped publish called The Cylinder With Four Million Teeth [below].
16 MAR POETRY VANDALS & BOOK LAUNCH "SIX OF ONE"
The Vandals performed on a couple of occasions, reading both old and new works.
17 MAR NEV CLAY LIVE ON ST PATRICK'S
Nev performed a beautiful gig today to the merry sound of chopping paper. You see, Richard Hall and I had decided to make a little zine, Nev's audience started coming in and then they all suddenly got involved. Afterwards they got to take a little book [see below] home with them - sweet! As I recall Lake Me couldn't make it, so John Egdell played instead with Jennie, which was lush.
25 MAR CREAMOLA FOAM
I got me a portable turntable too & me 'n Callan got together a few times to play sweet records for anyone who wanted to listen. We went on a tour of Scotland in the summer, played for Exploding Alphabets in Morden Tower and have done some gigs seperately. [I did a one for Novellus Castellum, for example & check some pics below of Chris's solo gig at the Cumberland Arms].
26 MAR & 02 APR DEBBIE BOWER & MAT FLEMING ARE MAKING A FILM
Debs & Mat came into the space on consecutive weekends to help people make some short 8mm B&W films.
27 MAR EASTER DAY TREASURE HUNT
The idea was simple enough... Mags and I made a little book called EGG about a little chicken who comes out of it's shell. All the pages were hidden around the space and contenders had to find all the different pages in order to make up the complete book. An alternative egg hunt you see!
29 MAR STEVEN LOWERY
Steve put up an impressive exhibition of drawings on yellow paper that more or less filled the space. He also made a couple of books with us [see below]. We also tried to have a jam as our old band Sock! but, as per usual, it ended in complete chaos [probably on purpose].
Steve's Publications
31 MAR BOOKVILLE HOSTAGE SERVICE
Strangely, no one took us up on this offer...
01 APR GEORGE J PEMLID "ALOSA AESTIVALIS"
A beautiful and quiet performance by shy George at Newcastle City Swimming Baths.
04 APR PILLOW + AMATEUR DRAMATICS + GREENSPACE
Pillow
Amateur Dramatics
& Greenspace
12 - 16 APR JAMES JOHNSON-PERKINS
James did a wicked residency day and exhibition of new prints all using a gadget to turn normal photos into zx-spectrum graphics. Click here to check out his website.
17 APR BOOKVILLE AT TYNEMOUTH MARKET
Me, Mags & Chris set up a funny stall at the crusty Tynemouth Bookfair. M did crazy portraits dressed up as "French" woman & Chris & I played records, made books & badges.
22 APR LACHRYMOSE ONE + TEARS OF ABRAHAM
Grunge-pop gruffness from Lach1 followed by Babreham's deep reverberations.
Lachrymose One
Tears of Abraham
23 APR THE BRIGHTON LINESMEN ON ST GEORGE'S DAY
Linesmen Rory & Larry came all the way up from Brighton to do a huge drawing for the space. It was exhibited with pride. Click here to go to the Linemen site.
The drawing... [about 3 X 2 metres]
30 APR - 01 MAY BOOKVILLE AT THE GREEN FESTIVAL
Creamola Foam made the usual stunning appearance with the badge machine, while Mags read people's Art Tarot in a grotty tent. It was a perfect weekend.
07 MAY FLORENTINA MEI MEI WHITE
Equestrian art-nut Florentina spent the day dominating myself & Richard Hall, poor boy. She left this strangely awful picture of a horse behind.
10 MAY NEILL SHEASBY
Neill positioned this extraordinarily heavy concrete shopping trolley by our front door. I believe it's still there.
13 MAY 3 POETS
Alec Finlay, Paula Cunningham & Ira Lightman gave a quiet poetry reading in the upstairs part of the shop.
14 MAY COLLEEN CHEN
Calligraphy master Colleen Chen painted the symbols for "Book & Village" for us & gave us a lesson in Chinese writing.
Book Ville
16 - 20 MAY MEANWHILE... PERFORMANCE WEEK
Mat Cowan was our butler on Monday
On Tuesday Carol Luby reconstructed Pieta as a Tableaux Vivant, Mat Giraud's Upside Down Man & Bridie Jackson's Sketch Night in the evening.
Wednesday had Topsy galavanting down the Waygood's old back alley in Love Me Avenue, Howard Laing's painting Tango & Patrick Snape in the evening.
Topsy
Howard
Patrick
The Newcastle Music Department descended on the basement on Thursday with a free improv night.
First thing on Friday was Hannah Paronage's Come Dancing to tape recorded instructions...
Then the first ever Exploding Alphabets!
21 MAY GAMES WORKSHOP WITH ILANA MITCHELL
Ilana utilised Bookville's chequered floor to develop some curious games for our customers.
24 - 27 MAY DAVID HAILS GRAF PROJECT
BV logo by Dave Hails
Hails spent all week spraying up the joint with a massive eyeball & tentacle piece...
26 MAY IMPROV NIGHT II WITH GUESSMEN
The Newcastle Music Dept. posse came back the week after their first outing to Bookville and sorted us out with an amazing gig including improv work from Guessmen & Will Scrimshaw.
28 MAY RUDEBOY NOAH PREACHING NARNIA
The Rudeboy spake the truth at Newcastle's monument.
31 MAY BOOKVILLE CLOSES - THE BIG BOOKVILLE BASEMENT BASH BONANZA
This was the night to end it all. It was crazy, beautiful and intense. I opened the door at 12 O'clock and let people take away free things while Creamola played records. At about 3PM the music started and carried on into the witching hour. A wicked way to go out & on to new things...
A Woman of No Importance - a sweet paired down set with wine glasses...
Greenspace
Lachrymose One
Nev Clay
Tears of Abraham dj'd throughout
Eagle Owl [I recall the fella on the right wearing the best knitted jumper I have ever seen]
Chippewa Falls
Field Music
Dressed in Wires hurt everyone's ears with his wicked crunchy scary and sometimes droll glitchcorepainthrashtrashhorror. Famously, he took a Barbie spaceship upon his head and ran through the crown with a wild look in his eye straight into the toilet door - a move repeated [remarkably] at the Distraction Weekender the following summer.
Ex Beta Band member Steve Mason AKA King Biscuit Time finished off with a DJ set.
Splendid visuals were provided by Debs & Mat
TOUR OF THE SHOP
BOOKVILLE IN THE PRESS
Get Rhythm Magazine
The Crack Magazine
A-N Magazine
BBC Radio North East & Cumbria
Newcastle Journal Culture Magazine
Published in the Artist's Book Year Book 2005-7
Feb - May 2005, High Bridge, Newcastle
