Thursday 28th March 6:30-8:30pm
PUBLICATION LAUNCH & EXHIBITION: Agony (In)cantations by Rabindranath X Bhose

Announcing the launch of a new publication: Agony (In)cantations, a collection of poems & illustrations, with an accompanying exhibition of vinyl works.

Join us for a presentation of sound poems from the very brilliant Nat Raha alongside a collective reading of Agony (In)cantations.

There will also be drinks and good chat amongst the friendly books of Good Press and a new installation of vinyl drawings and text.

"These unruly drawings & poems have been a few years in the making and it’s a relief to finally give them a material home. It feels like a fitting time to bring their pain and resilient energy into the world as we continue to work together towards ending Israeli apartheid and resisting the violence in Palestine. I hope to see some of you there ❤️‍🔥"

Exhibition continues until 6th May

Wednesday 24th April 7:30pm - late
OFFSITE BOOK LAUNCH!

Good Press & Baked Beans on the Doorstep launch the publication With Objects in Time by Sandra Johnston & Mónica Laiseca + music from Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh & Nathan Wheeler

Join us at Glasgow's premier spot The Old Hairdressers to celebrate the launch of a new publication With Objects in Time, Sandra Johnston in conversation with Mónica Laiseca.

This book has come about through an attempt to hold on to the experience of encountering Sandra Johnston’s performance practice, working from some of the images, feelings, connections and questions that it provoked in Mónica Laiseca as impetus for starting a conversation. Presented here are two interviews that were conducted in the winter of 2019, held just a few weeks apart in Newcastle and Glasgow, which have been transcribed and reconfigured as a series of fragments of conversations, and later intercalated with photographs and documents relating to the objects and live actions recalled in them.

The interviews were driven by Mónica's desire to be in the space of the objects that Sandra performs with, to see her actions from their vantage point and get to know their stories. A glass of water, a pair of tights, a belt, a table, a pair of football boots, a fan, an eyelash.

Sandra Johnston has been active internationally as an artist since 1992 in the field of site-responsive enquiry into ‘contested spaces’ working predominantly through performance art and video/audio installations. Johnston has held several teaching and research posts since 2002, including an AHRC Research Fellowship at the University of Ulster, Belfast, investigating issues of ‘trauma of place’. In 2007 she was the Ré Soupault Guest Professor at the Bauhaus University, Weimar. Between 2012-2021 she was joint-lead on the BxNU MFA programme at Northumbria University, England. Currently, she lectures at Ulster University in the Fine Art Sculpture department. In 2013, Johnston published her Ph.D. research project entitled ‘Beyond Reasonable Doubt: An Investigation of Doubt, Risk and Testimony through Performance Art Processes in Relation to Systems of Legal Justice’. Additionally, she has been committed long-term to exploring collaborative processes of improvisation, facilitating workshop encounters, alongside engaging with the development and sustainability of creative networks.

Mónica Laiseca is a curator and producer based in Glasgow. Her work combines closely collaborating with artists to facilitate the development of new work in different media, with broader arts management, the running of artist residencies and participatory projects, programming performance and teaching. Mónica’s recent curatorial work has been presented at Glasgow International, ArtLink Central (Falkirk) and Pier Arts Centre (Stromness). She recently joined Refugee Festival Scotland as Festival Manager. Previously, she oversaw a European programme of Studios of Sanctuary at Edinburgh Printmakers (2022-2023) and co-convened the MLitt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) at Glasgow School of Art (2014-2021). In 2021, she was a jury member of Spain’s National Visual Arts Award.

We will be joined by Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh & Nathan Wheeler for a musical performance on the night.

The Old Hairdressers, Renfield Lane G2 5AR, £5 entry

Tuesday 7th May 6:30 - 8:30pm
BOOK LAUNCH: LOVE THE WORLD OR GET KILLED TRYING by Alvina Chamberland

Join us for the Glasgow launch of LOVE THE WORLD OR GET KILLED TRYING, the English language debut from novelist Alvina Chamberland - featuring readings and a Q&A with Len Lukowski and Daisy Lafarge.

“Perhaps some hearts are so big they must constantly burst and break.”

LOVE THE WORLD OR GET KILLED TRYING has been named a Most Anticipated Book in Nylon, Them, Ms. Magazine, Autostraddle, San Francisco Chronicle, Russh-Magazine, Bay Area Reporter, LGBTQ-reads, and Chill Subs. It was the winner of the 2022 Noemi Press book award in prose.

Through playful poetic prose, sharp social commentary and self-deprecating gallows humor LOVE THE WORLD OR GET KILLED TRYING dives into the mind of Alvina, a trans woman on the eve of turning 30. The reader is invited to follow her journey through the breathtaking wilderness of Iceland and busy city boulevards of Berlin and Paris as she probes questions of eternity, sexuality, longing, death, love, and how hard it is to remain soft when you're a ceaseless target of straight men's secret lust and open disgust. This novel tackles universal issues through a trans woman's specific lens - insisting on these experiences speaking to far more than just issues of sexuality and gender.

Reaching its climax through an urgent wildfire scream-of-consciousness, cry-of-love-manifesto, LOVE THE WORLD OR GET KILLED TRYING is a raw and vulnerable work of magical brutalist autofiction; abstract in the sense of poetically digging beneath the surface, and experimental in the sense of trying to find out new things and express them in new ways, while concretely asserting that if trans women one day collectively outed every man who seeks them out, a full-blown revolution would ensue by nightfall.

Alvina Chamberland is a Swedish-US American author of predominantly literary autofiction novels. In 2015 Bokförlaget ETC published her co-authored book Allt som är Mitt: Våldtäkt, Stigmatisering och Upprättelse (English translation: All that is mine: Rape, Stigmatization and Reparation). The book received a grant from the Swedish Arts Council. In September 2018 her novel Utelåst – Uppväxtnostalgi för freaks (Locked Out – A nostalgic account of growing up for freaks) a parody of the coming of age-genre, was published by Dockhaveri Förlag. She resides between Athens and Berlin and has no real hobbies, only intensity and serenity. Love the World or Get Killed Trying, which explores both universal existential themes and themes specific to trans women's experiences, is her English language debut.

Wednesday 8th May 5:30 - 7pm
A BOOK LAUNCH

Join us for a presentation of artist books from Sculpture and Environmental Art students at the Glasgow School of Art

All welcome!