Cork Zine Fest: Irish fanzine culture well-represented at Shandon St event
L-R: Cork Zine Fest co-ordinator Mo Odling and assistant; the cover of Laurie Shaw's 'Classic Cigar Shape' comic-strip zine
Cork is a city with a history in fanzines, the self-made missives with roots in counter-culture and self-publishing - see the importance of zines to Leeside music, soccer and left-wing politics in the Eighties and Nineties. They heyday may have past, but it's a scene that still survives, as underlined by Cork Zine Fest, founded as ‘Doppelganger’ in 2018.
“This team, apart from (co-curator) Annie Forester, who's the baton handed over to her from (founder) Oriane Duboz, it's really four people, and none of us knew each other before the beginning of this year - we had not crossed paths before,” says co-ordinator Mo Odling, who works with a team of three other people to run the event.
“Just as these little papery, folded things spark this kind of fanatical kinship in people, that is what's inspired us to come together," she says.
“And there's the Cork Zine Archive - there's not just a recent heritage of it having happened here. There's the sense of Cork being not just a cultural city, but a publishing city, so it's been lovely just to feel very motivated to go through the admin-bomb that is organising something like this, and the wealth of responses we receive not just from within the city, but across Ireland.”
The weekender is happening in the Living Commons space on Shandon Street, a newly-emerging ‘social arts’ venue that’s hosted several community events and workshops, from repair cafes to performances. Much like the Zine Fest itself, this radical community hub is a distinctly DIY affair.
“The Living Commons, for me, as a member, and someone who's been doing the long-term programming there, wants to partner with things like Zine Fest, because it's so hard to run these things, there's already so many hurdles, and you want to make it as cheap and as accessible to as many people as possible, and we want to show that outside of the big institutions, things can still happen - and are still happening," says Odling.
“To have a space that brings DIY culture to life, and is a living space, it’s a match made in weirdo heaven.”
Odling is enthused by the medium’s lasting appeal, even in the digital age.
“The whole point of zines is that you can make them - and you should make them - however you want. People really do elevate them to be these beautiful, crafted things, or stray towards more sculptural work, visual art.
“It really comes down to the core of why people love to make zines: it's because you have something to say, you're creatively reflecting, and you can reach for something that says, 'no, this is perfectly great, this is what we're after, we don't want a beautiful oil painting that took two weeks, that cost thousands of euro, we want a little piece of your imagination'.”
- Cork Zine Fest takes place at Living Commons, Shandon Street, on Saturday December 3 and Sunday December 4. For more information on live events in the evenings, go to @corkzinefest on Instagram
a graphic zine about place, structure and language, written by Cork visual artist Kim Crowley, a former invigilator for the Irish Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale; in collaboration with artists Niamh Murphy and Eamon Ivri.
a monochromatic zine of narrative illustration in monochromatic shades of pink, from Co Antrim artist Sharon McKeown, the recipient of Streetmonkey Belfast’s Cool Banana award in 2018.
Somehow not satisfied with releasing seven (!) albums of DIY music in 2022 alone, Wirral-born and Cork-based singer and songwriter Laurie Shaw digs deep into streetwise imagery and comic-book iconography - rated ‘x’ for eczema.
A Cork-based South African artist, resident at Sample Studios, Elize de Beer looks at her home country’s cookery and kitchen life, and the role of an overlooked fruit in the middle of it all.
A joyful, illustrated zine celebrating the huge variety found in the shapes and colours of mushrooms, from former UCC Motley magazine fashion editor Justine Lepage.
