Inky fingers: Talking fanzines with Shy Bairns

Natalie Bradbury

In the first of a two part series, Natalie Bradbury talks to art collective Shy Bairns about fanzines, riso printing, and creating spaces for critique and debate. Their conversation occurs ahead of an exhibition of their work that will be curated by Bradbury and presented at PAPER in Manchester alongside artist Darren Nixon in 2021.

“I always describe it as a cross between screenprinting and photocopying. It’s one of those interesting mediums where there’s a lot of room for play in quite a lengthy process.” – Erin Blamire, Shy Bairns

The members of artist collective Shy Bairns are describing the method of risograph printing to me in their new studio in a former mill building in Ancoats, Manchester. It’s all so different to my experience. Although I spent seven years publishing a fanzine, The Shrieking Violet, in my energetic early twenties, I’ve never used a risograph or been part of a collaborative endeavour. I spent many solitary hours at the side of a photocopier in a newsagent’s opposite All Saints Park (at 2p a copy, it was the cheapest place in town), then hand-folding and collating the pages alone in cafes or on my bedroom floor.

In the next couple of weeks, Erin Blamire’s parents will bring over Shy Bairns’ own risograph machine, currently in storage in their garage in the North East (where all four members of Shy Bairns originally hail from) as it wouldn’t fit through the doors of their old studio in Salford. When it arrives, they’ll carry it past a gym on the ground floor and load it through the concertina doors of the building’s rickety, old-fashioned lift, which jolts to a halt as it reaches its destination.

Shy Bairns have grand plans for this open-plan space, and the riso (as it’s known for short) will be central to it. Founded in 2016 by Blamire, Izzy Kroese, George Gibson and Eleanor Haswell – who all met on an art foundation course in Sunderland – print is key to Shy Bairns’ work. Their fanzine-based practice combines a slick design aesthetic with content often created in collaboration with participants in public workshops. These have been in high demand from arts organisations: recent projects include a publication created at a workshop for David Lynch ‘superfans’, commissioned by HOME (Manchester) to accompany his exhibition there in 2019.

Shy Bairns are particularly interested in notions of fandom and collecting. For them, the fanzine format enables other voices to be heard, particularly those who may not be included in certain narratives, providing a space for other stories to be told. “Zines historically have had a very specific kind of purpose; they’re a platform for people who weren’t represented in mass media and needed their own voice,” explains Blamire. “If you’re going by the traditional definition, zines are DIY, low-cost production, low circulation, very small run and accessible.”

Fanzines have long provided a relatively quick and affordable means of publishing for those who may not otherwise have an outlet for their interests, whether as collectives or individuals. For Gibson, who feels that “contemporary art can be quite faceless,” they offer a bit of much-needed personality and enable you to “start feeling like you know that person.”

My interest in fanzines initially came from my dad’s collection, focused around music scenes such as punk and goth or on individual bands like the Cramps. Bought in the early 1980s at gigs or through the post via fan-clubs, they date from a time before the internet offered easily available spaces for niche communities to congregate. I’ve selected some from the North East of England to show Shy Bairns, where music fandom intersects with local interest stories specific to the area. I’ve also brought along some of my own zines, which focus on under-acknowledged places and offer alternative perspectives on city life. 

Most of the zines I’ve brought are collaged in a cut-and-paste style, typed with handwritten annotations then photocopied. Sometimes they appear to be deliberately as illegible as possible. This lo-fi aesthetic feels a long way from Shy Bairns’ beautifully designed objects, where design and materiality are carefully thought about. But the group feel an affinity with the format regardless. In this digital age, the printed page still has a clear appeal. “I just like holding things,” says Kroese. “We like making things that people can interact with, with their hands.”

Shy Bairns see their work as a “labour of love” – a way of enabling people to own something special and hand-crafted with skill. Kroese tells me that they use the riso to produce their fanzines not only because “it looks nice” but also as “it’s got more of a tactile feel.” To create a riso print, they explain, a laser cuts a design onto a screen made of thermal paper, which is wrapped around a drum. If the machine has one drum, it will print one colour, whereas two drums enable two colours to be printed. The materiality of the ink – touching it carefully, Blamire explains that it reacts with the oil on your fingers and never truly dries – is important to them; an early zine published by Shy Bairns featured a small square of vivid, saturated blue in each copy, cut out from the master print, in its own little plastic pocket at the back.

Having a riso in the studio will enable Shy Bairns to print their fanzines in-house, as opposed to sending them off to outside printers. The machines are often old and temperamental, but for Shy Bairns this adds to the attraction. “When the machine just fucks up a bit it’s really nice,” says Blamire. “It goes wrong a lot but sometimes the result is ‘more right’ than what we wanted to do anyway.” Gibson adds: “It’s a little bit more experimental than using a regular run-of-the-mill printer would be. There’s room for happy accidents.” 

As well as an openness to chance, Shy Bairns possess a great deal of technical knowledge and have an artist’s eye for the intricacies of publishing. Each member brings their own experience to the collective. As Kroese explains: “We all have tiny little skills that fit together to make the whole thing more interesting. If we were going to do the same projects on our own it wouldn’t be as good because we all bring different, brilliant things to the table.” It’s also evident how much they enjoy each other’s company and share an enviable camaraderie.

In 2019, Shy Bairns were chosen to take part in the group show ‘Collaborate!’ at Jerwood Space in London, which showcased collaborative practices. As part of the exhibition, Shy Bairns each taught each other a different skill. Gibson taught Coptic binding. Blamire taught typesetting – something the others found really difficult. Kroese – drawing on work experience at an architect’s office in Newcastle – taught Google SketchUp. Haswell taught linocutting. In spite of this, they see no need for differentiated roles; the members’ skills have merged into what Blamire sees as “one enormous practice.” “Every time one us of does something in our personal practice the rest of us say ‘oh that’s cool, I want to try that’,” she explains.

The results of these collaborations are displayed around the studio on bookcases, which feature an impressive range of publications made together over the past five years. Although institutional collections, such as university libraries have begun to acquire their work, much of Shy Bairns’ output is distributed freely via workshops and exhibitions. Other publications are available for small sums via their online shop or through the Patreon subscription service. It’s hard enough to sustain a DIY or freelance practice as an individual, let alone when (already low) fees are split between four people. Finding time for both external commissions and projects arising from Shy Bairns’ own interests and passions is a delicate balancing act, and this model helps generate further income for the collective to reinvest in their work.

As they take me through their library, Gibson, who now works as a university bookbinding technician, enthuses about different types of binding, whilst Blamire, who trained as a graphic designer, leafs through papers, reminiscing about the time they were let loose among a stash of fancy papers donated to a gallery by the manufacturer GF Smith. They discuss projects so complex they confounded external printers, encompassing stickers, inserts and errata slips.                 

We begin with their first zine, made just after they finished their foundation course, four years ago. It was both an excuse to continue to use the college’s facilities over the summer, and a chance to get to know each other, resulting in an enduring friendship. Sourcing content for Shy Bairns #1 and #2 through an open call, the only stipulation was that artists must be from or working in the North of England. The collective’s name – Shy Bairns Get Nowt, in full – is based on a Geordie saying about being too shy to ask for what you want and was partly prompted by a lack of space and opportunities for northern artists. Shy Bairns’ publications act as communities, opening up space for critique and debate. 

They show me a publication from an early workshop at Middlesbrough Art Weekender in 2017, which set the tone for much of this work. Setting up stall in an empty booth in a shopping centre for the day, and tempting people in with free sweets, they asked visitors a series of questions about the town, which acted as creative ‘prompts’. These ranged from relatively simple questions, such as ‘What did you have for breakfast?’, ‘How did you get here today?’, ‘What are you doing in Boro?’, and ‘What are you doing in the next hour?’, to asking participants for self-portraits, or to draw Middlesbrough’s iconic transporter bridge from memory, forming a “capsule” of the town. Gibson hands me one drawing created by a workshop participant, which strikingly represents the bridge through collaged scraps of paper.

For another workshop, held at the Tetley Art Gallery in Leeds, Shy Bairns asked participants to bring collections, either physical or digital, thereby giving status to ordinary objects and occupations. “One woman didn’t bring a collection but said she had what she believed was the largest collection of novelty cocktail sticks in the UK,” Blamire recalls. “I didn’t ask for proof, I just said ‘write it down and we’ll put it in’!”

In 2018, they were chosen to exhibit as part of the prestigious Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition for recent art school graduates. This presented an opportunity to show that fanzines, and collectives, had a place within a fine art setting alongside established media such as sculpture and painting which, Blamire notes, are “already taken seriously.” Shy Bairns’ contribution was to compile responses to the work from visitors over the course of the exhibitions (held in Liverpool and then London that year), which were handed out to the public as the shows went on. Shy Bairns’ own voices, which critiqued aspects of the exhibition such as the artist entry fee, were represented through the inclusion of a Facebook chat. Acting as an alternative to an ‘editor’s letter’, a publishing convention Gibson describes as “faffy and boring,” this enabled all four members to reflect critically and share their perspectives. 

Facebook chat was an important way to keep in touch when each of the four Shy Bairns dispersed to universities in different cities following their foundation course (Gibson and Haswell to Manchester, Blamire to Leeds and Kroese to London). Collaboration had to take place remotely via the internet before they came together in Manchester in 2018. Though physically they’re all based in the same city now, getting all four together at once is still a challenge. Shy Bairns’ work takes place around a variety of day and evening jobs, and all four members also balance their collaborative work with individual artistic practices. Today, I’m only hearing from three of the Bairns – one has had to miss our meeting at the last minute due to illness.

If Shy Bairns’ fanzines act as a community in print, their ambition now is to turn this into a physical space. Having spent so long making work separated from each other by time and distance, their new space is an opportunity to imagine from scratch what a collaborative studio might look like. Ultimately, they’d like to create an accessible, open-access resource for zine makers and DIY bookmakers, acting as a cross between a print studio and gallery. Although my own fanzine-making eventually ran out of steam – due to isolation, lack of funds and the pressures of other work – perhaps this might be my chance to resurrect it, learn some new skills, and have a go at riso printing myself! 

Shy Bairns will show alongside Darren Nixon at PAPER, Manchester in 2021. Shy Bairns will be co-curating a show at Bankley Gallery in Levenshulme, Manchester in May 2020 as part of the ‘Intersections’ series and are also undertaking a curatorial residency with PINKMCR. For more information keep an eye on www.shybairns.co.uk/. You can support Shy Bairns at www.patreon.com/shybairns. All images courtesy of the artists.