2008 - 2016: ProjectX MARKS THE BOKSHIPBookshop & Publishing Project SpaceLondon
X Marks the Bökship was a bookshop and project space for independent art publishers in London, UK.
It specialised in small press publications by artists and designers. The Bökship promoted contemporary publishing activity through book launches, events and production resources that brought together individual practitioners to create a local publishing community.
Bökship Projects include: The Cast of the Crystal Set, Artists’ Billboard, Publication as Practice, X-Operative, Publisher of the Month, Publisher’s Lunch, eShelf, the XARCHIVE and the XALPHABET.
X Marks the Bökship was started by Eleanor Vonne Brown. It began as a project space based at 210 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 originally sharing the space with Donlon Books from 2008 - 2010. It became an independent bookshop in 2011 hosting Swiss publisher Nieves. In 2014 X Marks the Bökship moved to Matt's Gallery, 42 - 44 Copperfield Road, London, E14 where is stayed until the gallery relocated in May 2016.
The X refers to many people: mark makers, sign writers, mathematicians and musicians. An X can represent a letter, a number, a symbol, a sign, a pattern or hidden treasure.
The Bök is Bökship is a nod to Canadian conceptual poet Christian Bök, author of Eunoia, a book which uses only one vowel in each of its five chapters. ‘Eunoia' was stocked in the bookshop alongside other examples of experimental literature, conceptual poetry and art writing and artist books. The Bökship was a unique event space in London for regular reading, performance and production of this type of material. It was a common space where cross disciplinary practices came together.
The Ship is a play on shop, it is the vessel that caries the books and their ideas propelled by a flow of people and their books, from different scenes and places.
X Marks of the Bökship sailed in on a wave of renewed interest in artist publishing. It hosted a group of artists, writers, designers and poets influenced by the avant-garde, Fluxus, Conceptual Art, immaterial practices and poetry, who came together under one roof to perform, converse, publish and distribute small printed publications between one another. The X Marks of the Bökship shop is now closed. See the archive on the Bökship website.
