POCKO COLLECTION
The Pocko Collection, available individually and in special box sets, is a series of pocket size books composed by different artists. Quirky and unique and always with a sense of irony.
Pocko Collection Series 1
1. Dear Thank You Yours Sincerely
This book is a collection of 77 letters received by the artist in reply to his incessant applications over a period of three years. From these most prosaic documents a kind of bittersweet poetry emerges, a sustained and repetitive meditation on the politics and the poetics of rejection. Author: Atsuhide Ito
Dear Reader,
Thank you for your interest in buying this book. However we regret to inform you that despite your impressive credentials, competition in this field is extremely fierce and unfortunately we are unable to grant your request at this time. Best of luck in the future.
Yours Sincerely,
Pocko
2. Yamanote
Iñigo Asis’s photographs, taken on Tokyo’s circle line, exploit the sense of ‘curtains opening’, when the unsuspecting passengers momentarily confront the waiting photographer.
Standing in front of the camera has never been so annoying. But the point is that from this uncomfortable situation the most fascinating facial expressions emerge: hidden details of the contained anger created by the impotence to do anything about it. Author: Inigo Asis
3. Powersmile
Privately collected by two German teenagers in the 70’s, the press-photos of US Senators and Governors in ‘Power-Smile’ are a miniature archive of a period when media-friendliness became the establishment’s key survival strategy, evidence of the then-emerging reality that a good PR shot is worth a thousands votes.
Clean as my teeth, straight as my tie. Here in all their greasy glory are the power-hungry political chameleons of Nixon’s America, flossing for office and combing for Capitol Hill. What do you see in the mesmerised stare? Learned or lobotomised? Groomed or doomed? Author: Adam Lowe
4. Tablehead
‘Tablehead’ is a kind of travelogue, a document on the appearance of ‘players’ in six different countries, and the pictures themselves are replete with subliminal signifiers of national difference.
They play without pay. Table footballers are four-inch ‘time capsules’. Bruised and abused by their obligitory vocation, some lose their heads, others bear their scars with pride. Every face a story soaked in personal pain and glory. Author: Nicola Schwartz
5. He said, She said
These unassuming snippets of typed dialogue and ultra-naïve felt-pen drawings of stylish young people, set against a background of lined school notepaper, presents us with a catalogue of poignant, and often hilarious, vignettes.
“I love you.” he said.
“How do I know that?” she said.
“You don’t.” he said.
Prodding for reassurance, these felt-tip creatures explore the deception behind romantic cliches. Emotions wrapped in words confuse the truth. It’s not that we don’t mean what we say, it’s that we don’t know what we mean. Author: Daisy de Villeneuve.
Pocko Collection Series 2
6. Lost Weekend
A series of illustrations springing out from the artist’s self imposed two-day weekend isolation.
Chronicling every idle thought, every unconscious wandering of a mind fizzing with humour and energy, Lost Weekend is a mental slideshow. Curious, thought-provoking and exceptionally funny, anything can happen in the world of a wondering mind. Author: Paul McDevitt
7. Day by Day
A photo-history on identity and the erosion of a relationship.
Time heals…and wounds.
A bittersweet portrait of the most difficult project of all: a relationship. Each face frozen on film tells a subtle story of hope, fear and our sheer determination to love. Authors: Ori Gersht and Tracey Ferguson
Pocko Collection Series 3
8. I Am Me
In the hyper-reality of popular Japanese culture nothing is ever as it seems. Every month thousands of the young Japanese girls that read teen magazine Nicola send in illustrated postcards to Yonehara, the editor. On blank cards the girls draw Manga style personifications of themselves.
What goes on in the mind of a teenage hormone-bomb? Slip under the skin of one of the world’s most impenetrable societies, below the apparent sweetness and feel the wakening heart beneath. Author: Yasumasa Yonehara.t
9. Out of Science
In Hiro’s world rational scientific order has completely collapsed – it’s almost as if the Enlightenment had never happened! Through a series of related images Hiro describes a world that is surreal, amusing and threatening by turns. His richly coloured, expressionist paintings are populated by a host of characters.
Is science the dominant religion? We place our lives in the hands of doctors, we trust science to play with natural order. Where will this worship take us? Where are we now? Strap on your safety belt and prepare to launch…out of science. Author: Hiro Sugiyama
10. U EL EL UL EL TE KA
The remarkable record of a series of co-operations between the Ukrainian military and a host of respected Ukrainian artists.
The USSR-the world’s last great empire was held together by the fear of the Red ARmy. Now, a group of Ukrainian artists and their former oppressors engage in a once unthinkable collaboration. As fashion blends with the crumbling symbols of military power, the old order fumbles down an unchartered trail. Author: Marta Kuzma
11. M.I.A.
Images and icons of revolution and resistance litter our visual environment. Torn from their original context they are put to work for their own ends by agents of our culture industry.
From a long-forgotten region of endemic conflict comes a project to challenge your ethical core. The art of warfare is sprawled across these pages transforming bloodshed into beauty and raising the phoenix of forbidden expression. Author: Maya Arulpragasam
12. Quattro Stagioni
Beware the darkness! This 24 page postcard book is the chilling visual record of the effect of the endless Finnish winter on Haapaniemi’s psyche.
Shrouded in winter for most of the year, Finland’s seasons are mostly left to the imagination. Fantasy creatures and visionary landscapes merge to create a whole new calendar. Author: Klaus Haapaniemi
13. EL Cártel
A book of fly-posters that have been displayed all over Madrid, broadcasting visual allegories on western life, society and politics.
You’ve stomached the papers, you’ve endured CNN, now see the news from the ground.
El Cártel is the siren of the city, waging a war of guerilla news on the streets of Madrid. Chronicling an age where information is industry, this activism art is the visual intifada. Author: Olaf, Jaques le Bisquit, Mutis and Eneko make up El Cártel
14. Postman
A cynical collection of comic images, each one painted directly onto envelopes and posted around the world.
Dragging the post office back from extinction, this sensational collection of storified envelopes fights the war against phone, fax and email. Addressed to Donald Rumsfeld, Tony Blair and a London Zoo Monkey, these are frescoes par avion that you’ll treasure forever. Author: Jeroen Teunen
15. DIY
The Pocko Family has given birth, and you are holding the baby. This Pocko infant is yours to mould into maturity. Lavish its pages with your wildest ideas, your fears and fantasies, all the things you wanted Pocko to do but were afraid to ask. Author: You
16. Cheap Pop
Reality is not always what it seems, you find yourself pixelated inside the graphic world of computer games and Japanese pop iconography.
Houston, we have a problem… What seems to be the trouble, Hubble? Aliens Houston, luminous demons and neon creatures, acid hair and mythical features, slam on the brakes, Houston, we gotta stop, we’re crashing down on planet POP! Beep!! “Game Over.” Say farewell to the reality of soil and water… welcome to Takora Futori’s cyber world of Cheap Pop
17. Hot Wheels
The obscure side of humanity’s savage love affair with the car buzzing insanely behind the wheel of a supersonic post apocalyptic drag race auto.
With flame on their wheels, mad racers are the lunatic fringe of motor racing. A ramshackle fusion of body and wheels is engineered. Oil and organs struggle for supremacy as man and motor drive each other round the bend. Author: Dan Holliday
18. Faulty
The awesome grasp of fervent love, deviant and yet compelling, where image and text merge in poetic constellation.
Two views of one love. She draws the pictures. He writes the captions. Together, they blend bleakness and beauty, crafting an arsenal of postcards for murderous love. Author: Soozy Lipsey and Mike Benso
