Vamp and Tramp Bookseller, LLC logo Instagram

   

Kamikaze Press ~ England / France
(Simon Redington)

Share this page:
   
University of Stirling: "Originally a painter of large expressionist oils, after ten years his focus of interest turned to the production of woodcuts and etchings influenced primarily by the work of the German expressionists, then later by the Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock masters."
   

The Grand Charade
By Simon Redington
[France]: Kamikaze Press, 2018. Edition of 100.

14.5 x 7.5" oblong; 40 pages with black paper end pages.

"The Grand Charade" is a catalog produced to accompany Redington's exhibition of the same name. The highlight of the exhibition is his series marking the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Catalog Introduction: "The Universal Declaration of Human rights was first published on 10th December 1948. To mark its 70th anniversary artist and printmaker Simon Redington has cut and pasted this sadly maligned and ignored document, in the traditional manner with scissors and glue. Presented on 20-foot high boards, it is displayed in five columns as it was originally intended to be viewed. The text was printed on a Vandercook letterpress using two-and-a-half inch high wood type spread over almost 200 lines.

"Redington has punctuated the manuscript with mixed media, collaged drawings — a proposed juxtaposition to assimilate a narrative, as opposed to an illustration of the text.

"Words and statements printed in red and black are used as torn and distorted fragments alongside a well-used cannon of newspaper cuttings, martial imagery, gloss and glitz, Marvel comics and Busby Berkeley Hollywood stills. Further source material was gleaned, subverted and fragmented from the painted designs of the Ramakien 'Glory of Rama'."

The catalog reproduces these words and statements along with his drawings in a reduced size. The catalog includes an introduction, pictures and brief statement about Simon Redington, and a credits page.
$75

The Grand Charade book
Click image for more

 

 

   
   

CHARGE!
By Alfred Lord Tennyson
Atelier Saint-Go, France: Kamikaze Press, 2016.

12 x 14.5"; 20 pages. Letterpress. Red end papers. Bound in gray leather boards with title inset on front cover in red leather. Signed and numbered by the artist.

Simon Redington's eclectic printing and illustrations accompany Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade." The poem was originally published six weeks after the military action during the Battle of Balaclava in 1854 during the Crimean War. The introduction is taken from the book "The Reason Why" by British historian Cecil Woodham-Smith (1896 - 1977).
$ 1200


Click image for more
   
   
SHAKE - The Ballad of the Blue Jean Bop
By Simon Redington
Atelier Saint-Go, France: Kamikaze Press, 2014. Edition of 30.

12 x 15.5" (380 x 302mm); 48 pages. Letterpress printed. Bound in bright yellow leather with red leather spine and title in blue leather inlays. In slipcase of blue leather boards and title in red leather inlays. Signed and numbered by the artist.

Simon Redington: "I started with the idea of a book on Jazz or Blues using phonetic phrasings of scat or blues verse ... however it somewhere transformed into a homage to the Rock'n'Roll icon Gene Vincent, lacing his song 'Be Bop a Lula' around shapes and colours that have autobiographical resonances with my own childhood holidays on and around Brighton Pier."

Be-Bop-A-Lula is a rockabilly song first recorded in 1956 by Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps.

Timothy W. Booher, IMDb Mini Biography: "Rock 'n' roll pioneer Gene Vincent was born Eugene Vincent Craddock (Vincent Eugene according to some biographers) on February 11, 1935 in Norfolk, Virginia. He quit school at the age of 17 to join the Navy. His naval career was ended following a motorcycle accident while on shore leave in 1955. Shortly thereafter he heard an up and coming singer named Elvis Presley and decided on a singing career of his own. His excellent voice helped to hook him up with Norfolk disk jockey Tex Davis who pushed him through to Capitol Records where he recorded the million selling Be-Bop-A-Lula in 1956. While his first record earned him several movie appearances … and helped him to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, his success was short lived. His original Blue Caps band broke up fairly quickly and his fame in America dwindled as rebellious rockers of the 1950s were replaced by clean cut teen idols of the early 1960s. Vincent moved to Britain where he was a cult figure in 1959 and remained there for a decade when he returned to America in 1969 with a new record deal and enjoyed a brief revival amongst the hippy teenagers in California who revered him as a legend."
$1,600

Click image for more
   
   

BOMB
a poem
By Gregory Corso
London: Kamikaze Press, 2008. Edition of 100.

11 x 14"; 24 pages. Letterpress with Baskerville type and various wood typefaces. Images composed from reduction woodblocks, woodcuts, and circular saw blades. Printed on Heritage 200 gsm (white) hand-wiped in an olive drab grey, 160 gsm (Bookwhite) and Diamant Transprint 170 gsm. Case bound in a slipcase and embossed in red metallic.

Kamikaze Press: "Bomb was written by Gregory Corso in 1958 whilst residing at the infamous 'Beat Hotel' at 9 Rue Git-le-Coeur in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Later that year this controversial poem was published by City Lights Books in San Francisco. It was originally designed as a 'concrete' poem and typeset in the shape of an exploding mushroom cloud. It has been described as an iconoclastic love song dedicated to the destructive power of a weapon of mass destruction, a heart felt homage to the terror of the H-bomb.

"The Kamikaze Press has reproduced this epic poem to mark the fiftieth anniversary of its first publication. Over these years metaphors of fear have shifted and images of prevailing carnage have become increasingly distorted and sinister. However the sentiment behind Gregory Corso's ironic message remains remarkably pertinent half a century later. The book concludes with Corso's self-penned epitaph."
$1,200

 

 


Click image for more


   
   

The Selfish Giant
By Oscar Wilde
London: Kamikaze Press, 1999. Edition of 60.

513 x 15"; 32 pages. Letterpress with Walbaum type and various decorative wood typefaces, including 14 woodcuts (7 colour and 7 black-and-white blocks). Printed on 200 gsm Stockwell cartridge paper. End paper handmade in Vietnam by Doa Van Chi. Case bound with blind embossed slipcase. Book and slipcase in black bookcloth.

Redington's bold woodcuts accompany the Oscar Wilde's tale of a once selfish giant who welcomes children to his previously forbidden garden.

Jim Anderson, Printmaking Today, 2001: "Among the works in Simon Redington's London studio are two self-portrait etchings showing the artist posed against the kaleidoscopic townscape of Hanoi, where he now spends half of the year. Figures framed in urban backgrounds are nothing new in this artist's work, but the spiky tensions that have for a decade characterised his London imagery have relaxed somewhat. The real giveaway is in the letterpress slogans slapped boldly across the images. One says, 'Zen Baby'; the second reads 'Nguoi Nuox Ngoai', Vietnamese for 'Foreigner'. Happily uprooted from his native UK, the artist sees the world from a new viewpoint. His new book - a woodcut illustrated version of Oscar Wilde's The Selfish Giant suggests a happier frame of mind. Gone are the harrowing Kirchneresque psychodramas of 1989's Hangman and the mordant social satire of the Bust and Hostel series from the mid 1990's. In their place is a more supple, rhythmic style, suggestive of puppet figures and folk art, with one foot in Oriental traditions. It is no surprise that Redington has been immersing himself in the imagery and mythology of Vietnamese art and culture. What is surprising is that this has prompted him to tackle a classic Western text."
$1,200


Click image for more

 

 

   
   

BUST
By Simon Redington
London: Kamikaze Press, 1994. Edition of 30.

8.75 x 6.75" closed, 8.75 x 52" extended; 9 unnumbered pages. Concertina style book with the signature ANTICHRIST set in Rockwell lengthwise down the spine and across the folds. Original ANTICHRIST photograph by Peter Grant. Printed using large headline wood type in red and blue dusted with silver powder on Bread and Butter (270 gsm) paper. Additional type set in Helvetica. Case bound.

Kamikaze Press: "The street slag vernacular contained in this book relates to a certain time and place located in the early 1990's and collected while I was working for the St. Mungo's Association. Blue Grenada refers to Tenants Super lager, Bullring Box-up was a toxic cocktail made up of waste alcohol including aftershave and hair spray, mixed in a gallon plastic container, shaken and passed around. The Bullring was a large homeless settlement underneath the Waterloo roundabout in London. Jack or Blue is undiluted Methylated Spirit. Shed Shot – an adjective describing oblivion, provided in many different ways. The photograph of Charlie Jnr. the self-named ANTICHRIST passed out after Huffing Glue, bag still in hand, a Christ like symbol of dereliction and decay. 'I am the Antichrist!' he would boom. BUST is an invocation of the lost and dispossessed falling between the covers of this book in a chaotic barrage of language."
$300


Click image for more
   
   

And That There...
Poems and Songs by Fred Tohill
Woodcuts by Simon Redington
London: Kamikaze Press, 1993. Edition of 100.

10.5 x 12"; 40 pages. Monotype cast in Perpetua. Handset in Broadway and various woodtype faces on Canaletto (210 gsm) paper. Case-bound. Signed by poet and artist.

Kamikaze Press: "Based on the transcript taken from a tape recording of Fred Tohill reciting his poems and singing his songs. The book exhibits his eclectic range of mentors and influences from the works of Shelley and Robert Service, from Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald to Frank Sinatra and Perry Como.

Paul Bell, October 1993: "The poems and songs you are about to encounter have a long history. They have been heard many times but no one, not even their author, has ever read them before. Because until this book they have never been written down. They reposed complete in their construction, in the head of Fred Tohill – sometime working man and seasoned drinker. Sired in bars and bleak bedsit rooms they tell of bawdiness and pleasure, of tenderness and pain, of love as it flourished or fails to flourish. Like favorite volumes they are pulled out, dusted down, and handed round when the drink and the company are merry, or down and nearly out."
$300

 


Click image to enlarge

   
   
What's so Funny About Peace Love & Understanding?

By Simon Redington
Vietnam: Kamikaze Press, 2008. Edition of 1000.

9.25 x 11.75"; 20 pages plus covers.

Printed on the occasion of Redington's exhibition October 2008 at Art Vietnam Gallery in Hanoi, this booklet served as his artist's statement for that exhibition. The illustrations for the book were taken from details of a folio of limited edition printed posters, BOLT-117, by Redington. The portfolio was the first work to be produced at the new Kamikaze Press studio in South West France.

Art Vietnam review of the exhibition: "The current collection is comprised of a series of stunning poster-style prints, oil paintings, and confrontational sculptures. BOLT 117, the title of print series, takes its name from the original 'smart bomb,' an ironic acknowledgement of how devilishly might has come to replace intellect as the true measurement of power. As the viewer examines carefully the provocative posters they are confronted with the absurdity of mindlessness, the absence of careful consideration, and the tendency of the public to retreat into a silent mental torpor. The oil paintings with their bright colors and highly graphic compositions are almost garish in their dark humor. They create a carnivalesque atmosphere with an unmistakable and all too familiar menacing undertone. The collection ends in a final flourish of carefully constructed
ear. The mannequin's ghoulish mocking, expressions emphasize the closing message, 'Wake up before it is too late.....

"With this body of work, some of Simon's most provocative to date, the artist hopes to stir the sleeping public, to awaken the critical mind. He asks with acute awareness, wry wit, and a deep sense of compassion....

"What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?" or as one might conversely say, What's NOT so funny about peace, love and understanding?"
$30


Click image to enlarge

 

 

 

   
   

Page last update: 04.26.18

 

   
                                                         
Home | About Us | Contact Us | New Arrivals | Fine Press & Artists' Books | Broadsides |Resource Books | Order/Inquiry

                                                          Copyright © 2015 Vamp & Tramp, Booksellers, LLC. All rights reserved.