Introduction

The San Francisco Center for the Book is proud to be the first U.S. venue for Inside Cover, an exuberant and witty exhibition of international artists' books curated by English book-artist and publisher Jonathan Ward. The show's 20 books-by Dutch, English, French, Irish, Italian, Scottish, German-born and American-born artists-are impressive for their sheer variety of artistic intentions and diverse techniques.

There's a contemporary Book of Hours that juxtaposes an irreverent version of the Immaculate Conception with traditional typography and hand-colored illuminations. A collection of lush, digitally manipulated photographs recreates the physical reality of a wild woodland. A book-in-the-round invites office workers to turn paper clips and thumbtacks, staples, rubber bands and more into musical instruments. There's a fur-bound book that explores the relationship between hunter and prey. There's a stack of clear screw-top pots, each containing a nonsense sentence using every letter of the alphabet, plus an object that hints at the meaning of each surreal text. Several books start flat and become three-dimensional as readers get involved in their construction. Even the accompanying catalogue comments on the bookform by simultaneously functioning as publication, individual brochures and 20 color posters.

Whatever your taste in books, you'll find something that satisfies and intrigues in this exhibition, where, as curator Ward says, "traditional book forms exist alongside objects which play at the margins of bookishness."

Inside Cover is also our first thoroughly hands-on exhibition. Acknowledging that there are few greater pleasures than the look and feel of a book in the hand, we're inviting visitors to handle many of the exhibits, making a different book touchable every week.

The show features work by Michael Abrahams, Rudi Bastiaans, Penny Baxter and Nicola Gray, Les Bicknell, Kate Blacker and Pauline Pierson, Sarah Bod-man, Andrea Chappell and Cherry Goddard, Jeremy Deller, Helen Douglas, Henk Hans Hilvering, Stephen Hoskins, Susan Johanknecht, Deidre Kelly and Enrico Palandri, Didier Mathieu, Uwe Poth, Deb Rindl, Sandy Sykes, Chris Taylor and Craig Wood, Seet Van Hout and Jonathan Ward.

Inside Cover comes to San Francisco following exhibitions in Limoges at the Centre Culturel Jean-Pierre-Fabregue, in Dublin at Designers Choice in the Fitzwilliam Conference Centre, at The Arena in Oxford, the Dean Clough Galleries in Halifax, and at the London Print Studio in London.

Work from the exhibition has been purchased by the Tate Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, All Saints Library in Manchester, the National Library of Tokyo, the Pays Paysages Collection at St Yrieix-la-Perche in Limoges, the Bibliotheque de Pret of France, the Centre for British Art at Yale University, the Brooklyn Museum of Art Library and the Museum of Modern Art Library in New York, the Joan M. Flaxman Library in Chicago and by many private collections around the world.