get yerself free with the barrel nut issue #8!

April 10, 2014 at 7:53 am | Posted in art, no audience underground, not bloody music | Leave a comment
Tags: gary simmons, hiroshima yeah!, no audience underground, robert ridley-shackleton, sophie cooper, the barrel nut, visual art, zines

Ladies and gentlemen, RFM is delighted to announce the arrival of lucky number 8 in the continuing series of puzzling art pamphlets known as The Barrel Nut. This issue has a carefully thought out narrative throughline and absolutely wasn’t just gummed together on the kitchen table as I tried to ignore my son coughing through the baby monitor.

The first two pages are more prison sketches from (now freed) Gary Simmons of Hiroshima Yeah! fanzine, dating from the early days of his sentence as he languished in Pentonville – his skilful draughtsmanship only enhancing the brick-bound despair.

The centrefold is given over to two tremendous collages of detritus from friend-of-RFM Robert Ridley-Shackleton. I was delighted to receive these examples of junkyard exuberance in the post so as well as the slightly trimmed black and white versions you’ll find in the microzine I’ve headed this post with full colour scans of the originals.

Finally, we have two lovely autobiographical cartoons from Sophie Cooper. The first a beautifully free sketch of her on the step painting her toenails in the Summer heat, the second a character swamped by his or her own guitar – a simple but effective comic metaphor for the overwhelming nature of creative endeavour.

So there you have it: from imprisonment, through artistic chaos, to freedom. Clever, eh? The cover collages are by me, as usual – the symbol of the crossed slugs celebrating the arrival of Spring and the growing season…

Just in case you are new to this (hello post-oTo-archive-post readers!) and are wondering what I’m talking about here’s the usual explanatory blurb:

The Barrel Nut is a microzine – a single sided, single sheet of A4 paper cleverly folded to make an eight panel, A7 pamphlet. Paper copies will be distributed to anyone who wants one, or who has expressed an interest in the past. I’ll bring some to gigs I attend and a bunch will be passed around by those with a similar love of the post.

Should you be so inclined then you are very welcome to download and print out your own. Links to the latest issue in jpeg and pdf formats are below (you’ll need to trim the print-out a bit down one edge to make it fold properly). Some more context, assembly instructions and previous issues can be found on The Barrel Nut’s own page (tabbed above).

Should you wish to contribute artwork then I would be very grateful indeed. Submissions need to look OK when reproduced as a black and white photocopy and be 7cm by 10cm in size (or scalable to roughly those dimensions). Good quality scans attached to an email are fine, originals sent in the post ideal. Please get in touch.

As ever, I’m proud to bring this to your attention. Contributors and subscribers will be receiving copies in the post in due course. Links to downloadable versions below, as promised. May I repeat my cutomary plea? Leaving aside a rainy day stockpile of stuff by the regulars I am in need of submissions for future issues. If you dig this odd little project then please feel free to give it a go.

The Barrel Nut issue #8 as a pdf file

The Barrel Nut issue #8 as a jpeg file