Small Press
Personal, historical, visual. Reflecting on a polarised past – but looking towards a hopeful future.
A Zine is a small press publication, rarely to be found in a shop, but quite a thing to behold all the same. Each one has 16 pages or so, and is full of cartoons about growing up in Ulster. They are a think-and-wonder creation in the soul-scraping search for my own identity.
A Patchwork Province – Zine Series
Making zines of these cartoons wasn’t the original plan. These cartoons were created for their cathartic benefit – not to make money.
When the Cartoon Museum in London suggested thinking about small press as a way of weaving together a theme at a time, A lightbulb moment occured and A Patchwork Province – Stories of Ulster was born. Each print run has 100 zines, each individually numbered.
‘I am on first name terms with gravity. Birds assume I’m a tree without leaves and give me a little chirp as they fly past. Chairs complain at my heft. And doorframes? – well door frames can be so cruel…’
-An excerpt from Nothing to See Here.
‘Back home we heard the low chook, chook, chook of a chinook helicopter pretty much every day. The police guns, the checkpoints, the army combing the fields. The grey heaviness in the air.’
– An excerpt from Aftermath and trauma.
‘When there was violence, Ulster was closed. But every time I return home, I notice that Ulster is just a wee bit more open. Open to talking about the past with all its pain. Open to getting together and learning from each other.‘
– An excerpt from Ulster says maybe.