On the night Ania will be in conversation with Christiane Monarchi, founding editor of photomagazines Photomonitor, and Hapax. The talk will be followed by a booksigning.
The first photobook by the Polish-British artist Ania Ready responds to literary texts by a modernist, trilingual author of Polish origin, Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska (1872–1925). By combining Ready’s photography and Gaudier-Brzeska’s writing, this book explores the themes of displacement, creativity, loneliness, and social exclusion. Through re-enactment and performative photography, it reintroduces an undeservedly forgotten and stigmatized writer. This is a book within a book, with literary texts presented on small, yellow pages to resemble Gaudier-Brzeska’s archive. This book was created with consideration for the environment, printed locally on recycled, carbon balanced papers supported by the World Land Trust. It is bound with bookcloth using yarn derived from ocean bound plastic. It was beautifully designed by Victoria Forrest and published by VIKA Books in 2023.
Ania Ready is a Polish-British photographic artist based in Oxfordshire, UK. She works with images, text and archives. She has a special interest in the topic of femininity and madness. Ania has exhibited her work internationally in group and solo shows at Modern Art Oxford, Pitt Rivers Museum, ronapainting gallery, Irving Contemporary Gallery, Auckland Photo Festival, Riga Photomonth, Interphoto Festival, Photo Oxford and many other places. Her literary photobook ‘I Also Fight Windmills’ was published last year. www.aniaready.com Instagram: @aniaready
Christiane Monarchi is the founding editor of the online photography platform Photomonitor which has published over 1,400 features and is now in a research collaboration with University for the Creative Arts. She also co-founded Hapax Magazine, a print publication commissioning new photographic ideas. Christiane is a freelance curator, lecturer and artist mentor. She served as Chair of the Board of Directors at Photofusion, London for four years, and currently serves on the steering committee of Fast Forward, Women in Photography and as a trustee of the Centre for British Photography.