TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH TANYA PEIXOTO

Hello right OK so you are?
Tanya Peixoto

So what gave you the idea of of starting the bookshop?
Um, visiting Printed Matter in New York which has been going since the 60s and being inspired by how women had found a place publishing in artists books, and I felt that that was a very interesting discovery

OK, were there any funding or grants available to help you?
No

Didn’t think so, so what’s your actual background?
I studied sculpture at Chelsea and there's a library there that collected artist books there was a specialist, a guy called Dr. Stephen Berry had introduced them to me there

OK, and um, these questions are not in a very good order, how do online sales compared to bricks and water sales?
well I should think now online sales are the best way for artists book publishers to go ahead with really

OK, and what do you think is the best method of promoting your shop?
I think it's good by word of mouth and by people sort of discovering it for themselves and I don't really promote it very much

Right, oh, okay that's good to hear, I hate self promotion! so this might be a bit redundant… what would you say is your motivation in running the shop?
I’m completely obsessed with artists books! And books! And I make them available to you know, to people for them to feel the way I did when I first discovered them

Oh right, and do you make artists books yourself?
I have done in the past and occasionally yeah, it’s no big deal

OK, and I'm not sure if this is a bit of a rude question, but does the shop make enough profit to make a living, or do you supplement it?
yeah it doesn't make enough profit to make a living

Yeah, but you still keep it going, which is brilliant, I love it. And, um, I'm not sure about this but do you know any of the artists personally? Do you think they might consider answering some questions about their work and selling and their motivation?
I think you should go on the Small Publishers Fair online right now

Oh OK
Where all the publishers are available to be emailed and talked to right now

OK, right
Yes, it’s called Small Publishers Fair, online

OK, brilliant, all right. I think that’s it, that’s all I’ve got. Can you just say what you said again about images and text?
OK, so what I said was what really excited me about artist books apart from the fact that there, you know, a genre of their own, an art form in their own right like painting or sculpture or printmaking that considers all the elements of a book as being something that communicates a meaning. I was also, always have been very interested in how image and text relate to each other and when you put them together it makes a new language something that happens to you in your brain that doesn't happen on its own when it's just text or on its own when it’s just image, it’s this coming together of the two that sets up something else.

Yeah
Cos they can contrast, they can contradict each other, you could have, you know, you can have an image of a shoe and something that says you know, I am a horse but what it sets up, you know that’s kind of Magritte inspired

Yeah, that’s a really interesting idea actually, excellent, OK, I hope that worked