Clotilde Perrin, At the same moment on earth (Au même instant, sur la Terre...), Rue du Monde, France, 2011

A really beautiful, and a quite large accordion that journey's across the globe dropping into 24 different cultures to peek at what the children in all these places would be doing at the same moment across the world. The illustrations by Perrin are superb making it easy for kids to empathize with these fellow children across the globe, and to spark their curiosity about these faraway destinations. Perrin has also quite subtly drawn the backgrounds to all these different places in such a way that they all join up and form an almost seamless backdrop to her story.

24 pages, on stiff cardboard, single-sided, individual pages 13" (H) x 6.25" (W), when fully opened 12ft 6".

accordion slipcase and the work

Caroline Sury, Grigi, Le Gangue Edition, Marseille, 2019, ed. 90

I just had to include this fun book by Sury, its not an accordion but each page is folded in half and when you start opening up two sequential pages you get a wonderful accordion book effect. Sury is founder, along with her partner Pakito Bolino, of Le Dernier Cri, an incredible publishing house known worldwide for their artists' books and magazines....check them out: http://www.lederniercri.org/catalog.html?lang=2

10 double-sided pages, 5.75" (H) x 4.5" (W). 

Sam Taylor-Wood, Unhinged, Bookworks, London, 1996, ed. 1000

 

A curious little accordion from this well known Brit film maker and photographer, who was also a member of the YBAs (Young British Artists) group that emerged to much acclaim in London in the late 1980s.

Apparently Taylor-Wood shot these photographs on a film set and then sequenced the resulting works in a manner where its hard to discern a theme or plot. The series really pushes the viewer to make up their own interpretations, and create their own shorts from this film strip.

22 pages single-sided, individual pages 5" (H) x 5.5" (W), when fully opened 10ft 1".

Marek Bieńczyk (author), Joanna Concejo (Illustrator), Prince in a Pastry Shop, Format publishing company, Wroclaw, Poland, 2016

This is the Polish version of this much admired book. The story revolves around a prince, his bear friend as well as his girlfriend, and their experiences in a pastry shop. One would usually assume that being in such a place would be a wonderful and happy experience, but the prince appears to be in a big funk.  Everybody around him is trying to make him happy, but it appears to be a hopeless task!  

The illustrations by the Polish artist, Joanna Concejo, are masterfully subtle and understated, and there's a wonderful sense of humor to the works, particularly in her depictions of the animals and the shenanigans they are all getting up to! This is coupled with her use of the panoramic space of the accordion and the elegance of her illustrations, which really takes this work to another level of excellence.

42 single-sided pages, 13" (H) x 5.5" (T), when opened 19ft 3".

Helen Douglas, Frost Bites, Weproductions, Deuchar Mill, Scotland, 2017

A really beautiful accordion by Douglas, a longtime book artist who has used this format in many of her works, indeed a recent exhibition at Edinburgh's Fruitmarket Gallery in 2019, consisted solely of concertina books. This delicate work in which frost is cast as the harbinger of winter, has been printed on a very thin paper which adds to its ephemeral feel, and it enhances the contrast between the flowing of the water in the background (sky) and the solidity of the vegetation on the bank (earth).

For further information about this distinguished Scottish book artist start here with her publishing imprint! http://weproductions.com/index.html 

14 pages, single-sided, individual pages 9.5" (h) x 3" (w), when fully opened 3ft 6".

Juan Echeverry, Dead End, Bogota, Columbia, 2016

I'm not quite sure what is happening in this 'endless loop' of an accordion, but it seems there are two dialogues between represented here — one in black ink and the other in green. Either way there's a slightly creepy quality to the things that this man sees and imagines as he walks down the street. Not for the faint of heart from this artist from Columbia!

On a technical note, I'm not even sure that this book meets the definition of an accordion, but its very close, at a minimum an 'expanded book'.

14 pages, one-sided, individual 4.25" (h) x 4.5" (w), when fully extended 34".

back cover

Taehyoung Jeon, Rain, Seoul, S. Korea, 2019

This accordion is so deceptively simple and it takes full advantage of the key feature of the accordion in such an effective and beautiful manner. A historical precedent for this work would be the visual poem that Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) first published in the journal SIC, #12, 1916 titled "Il Pleut," that mirrors with sentences the streams of rain as they fall across the page (see at bottom of this entry).

8 pages, single-sided, individual pages 5.25" (h) x 4.25" (w), and when fully opened 34". 

 

                                Guillaume Appollinaire, Il Pleut (It Rains), 1916