Eighteen Years Old
Tabloid newspaper with hand-assembled art print, ‘Looking For A Friend, For Someone To Hold’
Photographs of broken trees and unpunctuated text recount the personal experience of being targeted by queer bashers when out cruising alone ‘looking for a friend’ in the early 1980s in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Eighteen Years Old functions as a document of violence but also as a means to pay tribute to a ‘queer saviour’ forty years later.
I watch as a group of men a gang of about ten come towards me from the road ahead some carry baseball bats others have clenched fists at the ready to deliver a blow
Adopting the tabloid newspaper format to tell a personal story printed on fragile newsprint, the photographs in the publication were taken near the location of the attack at Park Zypendaal, Arnhem, the Netherlands at the onset of spring in 2024. I printed the photographs in the book on newsprint, scanned these positives then deleted the original digital files.
Some men need to attack to hurt to kill because they are unable to challenge the void that lies inside them to challenge the lies inside that void them that make them null and void unreal unloved lives wasted destroyed
Published by Negative Press London, 26 October 2024. Launched at the Small Publishers Fair London. In the collection of The National Poetry Library.
Available at https://www.neg-press.com/product/eighteen-years-old
Eighteen Years Old in the artist’s book group show ‘At The Promised Place: Expanding Imagination Through Book Art’, Urawa Art Museum, Saitama, Japan, 15 November 2025-18 January 2026. Curated by Noriko Suzuki-Bosco and Sarah Bodman. Eighteen Years Old is printed on 55gsm newsprint and weighs just under 100gm. It is juxtaposed with Armored Book Icarus by Hiroshi Nakamura, a book made of copper weighing 23kg. Both works explore ideas around masculinity. Photo by Noriko Suzuki-Bosco
Eighteen Years Old is included in At the Promised Place: Expanding Imagination Through Book Art, Urawa Art Museum, Saitama, Japan, 15 November 2025-18 January 2026
A spoken word version of the book was performed during the first Negative Press Artists’ Books Reading Room, CEOS 2025, London 8 June 2025
Book - 16pp, 28.9cm x 37.5cm, newsprint, EU Ecolabel and FSC certified, ink free from solvents and VOCs. Artwork - FSC-certified board and Kraft stock. Glossy photograph with mono text to rear, Kraft photo corners
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