Geoff Sawers
Geoff Sawers is a writer and artist. He is bored of just getting short-listed for things. Always the bridesmaid, never the sea monster.
Geoff’s Redden Press publications are:
Dreams: a pamphlet featuring Geoff’s vivid, colourful and fantastical dreams.
Found lettering: a pamphlet with 16 photos, taken around Reading (except for one!), featuring written messages and lettering found out and about.
Bees on my left hand: a microbook with 5 photographs of bees on Geoff’s hand! If they are cold, bees like to sit on a finger or thumb while they gradually warm up. Also available as a nanobook.
Heather McAteer
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.
Heather’s book is Forests of Dreamland
Helen Westhrop
Helen Westhrop is a visual storyteller and a self taught textile artist and printmaker. Over the past couple of years she has created Coat Hanger Dolls, made from wire, fabric and other materials, which she brings to life through short stop motion films. The dolls wear beautiful hand stitched and knitted clothes, and are a band of outsiders and misfits with attitude!
Helen’s Redden Press publication is:
Coat Hanger Dolls: out and about which features the dolls in sketch form, accompanied by a series of haiku poems.
To learn more about the Coat Hanger Dolls and Helen Westhrop’s art, visit her Instagram page.
Jonathan Davidson
Jonathan Davidson is a poet, writer and literature activist. He lives in the English Midlands but works internationally. His poetry has been widely published and he has also written memoir and criticism. His radio dramas and adaptations have been broadcast by BBC Radios 3 and 4. Much of his work is focussed on how writing – especially poetry – is experienced by readers and listeners. His website is https://jonathandavidson.net/
Jonathan’s Redden Press publication is:
The Slow Poetry Movement: a small pamphlet which reproduces text originally published on Jonathan’s blog. It is a call for poetry to be read, written and enjoyed more slowly.
“The SloPoMo (as we are wont to call it), suggests that to encourage the constant and increasing production and consumption of poetry is not necessarily entirely good, and may do more to reduce our happiness than increase it.”
Matt Hulse
Matt Hulse is a Reading-based artist, filmmaker, photographer, performer and writer. His films have screened at dozens of festivals and galleries in 25+ countries internationally. In 2017 he was the overall winner of Germany’s prestigious Felix Schoeller Photo Award. Matt often celebrates the Reading-Düsseldorf link in his work, and in 2021 together with Düsseldorf artist Julia Zinnbauer he initiated the Mayor’s Brick Exchange, a ‘new tradition’ inspired by Düsseldorf artist Joseph Beuys. In 2023 Matt created a special film for September’s Hexabition celebrating 45 Years of The Hexagon.
Matt’s Redden Press publications are:
03.04.2023: a Redden Photo Zine with 12 photos taken by Matt on a single day in April. The photos have an ethereal quality – you might call them urban dreams.
Balloon: a prose poem in pamphlet form imagining a possible Reading – how things could be in a town where creativity and people can thrive.
Neile Wright
Neile Wright is the founder of Bookface artists’ book fair which takes place at The Rising Sun Arts Centre annually. Her book works are playful and experimental, and have been exhibited at Woodley Library, The Rising Sun Arts Centre, OpenHand OpenSpace Gallery, Battle Library and Reading Central Library. She also loves to take photographs and can be found on Instagram @pigeon_246.
Neile’s Redden Press publication is:
Os: a microbook with 6 photographs of the letter O as found on road name signs. Viewed singly, each O is a miniature work of art.
Redden Press 