Books

NEW! The Shepherd Family at Thames Side: Imagined lives by the 1850 river by Helen Westhrop

June 2025 ISBN: 9781738550913 215x180mm 40 pages – Limited edition of 35 copies, produced by specialist traditional bookbinder Blissetts, and featuring naked binding and GF Smith cover card.

A spiral bound A5 edition also available.

The book will be available to buy from the artist and also from Redden Press.

Helen Westhrop is a textile artist, stop motion animator, costume designer, filmmaker, storyteller, and illustrator. Using metal wire and fabric, she has created a community of coat hanger dolls representing an extended family of ordinary people living by the riverside in Reading at the time in the mid-19^th century when the town was industrialising and the old rural way of life was changing. This book introduces the family and a few of their acquaintances, with pencil sketches and vignettes which imagine the life experience of each of the characters. Also included are photographs by Matt Hulse of the dolls themselves from Helen’s residency at the Turbine House at Blake’s Lock in Reading in 2024.

We are grateful to RGSpaces for providing a grant towards the publication of this book and also an accompanying film by Matt Hulse. Matt’s film can be seen on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2boP44oIHzM

Forests of Dreamland: artworks on found paper from Heather McAteer

Published in a first edition of 100 copies

June 2024 ISBN: 9781738550906 Price: £15

Heather McAteer is a Belfast-born artist who has lived in Reading since the early 1990s. Her distinctive imagery is drawn from the area of Belfast where she grew up and is an emotional response to her past from the perspective of someone who is now an outsider, an exile. Her works are typically created using graphite, and are dreamlike, almost surreal, eerie and sometimes unsettling. They feature trees and wooded areas, not idyllic or pastoral but with a suppressed threat lurking under the surface. Unquiet nature is very dominant in the work, but there’s also redemptive nature there too, a sense of beauty as well as darkness.

The 19 works included in this book were all created using found paper from old books and maps. Like history, and life, art is layered on top of the past, partially obscuring but also transforming it. The paper retains visible traces of its earlier form but has become something new.

With a foreword by John Higgs and an in-depth ‘in conversation’ piece with fellow artist Robert Fitzmaurice which charts Heather’s creative process, influences and background.

Email me to buy a copy

Learn more about Heather’s art on her website here