collaborations

Utopia

Judy Kravis & Peter Morgan

We invited people to imagine beyond their present state, to conjure a society in which they’d like to live.

Here’s a sudden freedom to release what’s possible, regardless of everything, in a tempestuous forward movement.

We live in a state of ranting and fear. We only have time for opposition. Utopia isn’t opposition, it’s radical dreaming.

24pp, 200 x 200mm, handsewn, cover with french flaps.
Edition of 101, June 2024

I am the messenger

Peter Morgan

I am the messenger and I am angry. I know the science and I am afraid. Things are falling apart, but that is exactly the time when change is possible. Greta Thunberg has been speaking loud and clear. But is anyone listening? The future is now, or, there is no future.

A compilation of images and texts from 25 contributors.

60pp, 160 x 210mm, thread-sewn, colour pictures throughout.
Edition of 50 hbk and 101 pbk. April 2021

news from nowhere

Judy Kravis and Peter Morgan

William Morris published News from Nowhere in 1890 as a vision of an ideal twenty-first century. From the actual twenty-first century, here is a book of echoes and questions. Both sympathetic and contrary signals run between images and words. Is every romantic the last?

20pp, 150x150mm, stapled, edition of 101. A Road Book, October 2016

dreaming in Bandon

Judy Kravis and Peter Morgan

For several days we wandered in and out of shops and offices in Bandon, County Cork, asking people we met if they would tell us a dream they’d had lately, or could remember from the past. It is a curious and intimate question. Responses were often cautious, excuses frequent. But, once engaged, dreams flowed, rising and falling like a pulse of the town, unseen, unknown, till now.

20pp, pbk,150x150mm, edition of 101. A public access book, September 2015

fear

Judy Kravis and Peter Morgan

93 first year students at Limerick School of Art and Design wrote and drew their fears. ‘Fear of chalk sponge spiders snakes vomit balloons control. Fear of dying young. Of growing old. Not knowing the truth. Not fitting in. Making decisions. Having my ears touched…’

12pp, 150x150mm, pbk, edition of 101. Road books, 2014

fascinating serendipity

Judy Kravis and Peter Morgan

83 words chosen on the spur of the moment by 83 first year students at Limerick School of Art and Design, recombined, reconnected and disguised by Peter Morgan and Judy Kravis.

The word ‘serendipity’ derives from an old name for Ceylon, which is itself an old name for Sri Lanka. Horace Walpole first used the word in 1754 after reading an old tale called ‘The Prince of Serendip’. Serendipity means discovering something you aren’t searching for. Serendipity is not just a question of luck, Walpole insisted, but also of sagacity.

20 pp, 150x150mm, stapled, 20 colour pictures, Edition of 201, A public access book, February 2013

21 proposals for the Turbine Hall

Judy Kravis and Peter Morgan

The Tate invites. You do not send in proposals. To write a proposal for the Turbine Hall is to dream seriously. This is a startling and provocative range of proposals, most of them from Ireland, some within the bounds of possibility, some beyond. Contributors grapple with abstractions like truth and fear as well as with the dense physicality and absurdity of the world we live in. The Turbine Hall is occupied by cars or carcasses, sharks or poltergeists, by energies of the mind.

48pp 175x223mm, thread sewn, french flaps, 22 b+w illustrations.
Pbk. ISBN 978-0-9519358-5-9 Edition of 501.
A public access book, November 2011

mesmerized

Judy Kravis and Peter Morgan

A collective contemplation of water through the words and drawings of schoolchildren in Bandon, County Cork, assembled and transformed by JK and PM. ‘A big river stretched from one end of my eye to the other … the closer I got the more mesmerized at every step.’

24pp, stapled, 210 x 200mm, pbk, text and drawings.
Numbered edition of 201. A public access book, 2010.

When the bells go down: A portrait of Cork City Fire Brigade

Judy Kravis and Peter Morgan

A rare insight into the life and banter of a bunch of lads whose work the public takes for granted – until the day they’re needed. Siren roaring, blue light flashing. Is it as exciting as a child imagines? Over 100 firemen photographed and interviewed, their words edited to form one voice.

Commissioned by Cork City Council.

96pp, sewn, 226mm x 226mm, pbk, french flaps, colour and b/w photos. Edition of 900. ISBN 0 9519358 2 8. Road books, 2001

Cloughjordan now – portraits in a village

Judy Kravis and Peter Morgan

‘Tis grand and quiet if you’re into quiet. You’d nearly know everyone in the village. I can’t see there being any better place to be.’ 20 colour photographs of people who live in Cloughjordan, County Tipperary, and brief interviews, including 40 schoolchildren taking a guess at their future.

Commissioned by North Tipperary County Council.

24pp perfect bound, 152 x 175mm, pbk. Edition of 750. Road books, 2000

Lives Less Ordinary: Thirty-two Irish portraits

Judy Kravis and Peter Morgan

The people who talk about their lives in this book represent a creative, dissident Ireland. Some continue ways of life that have existed for generations; others have chosen to live and work in ways that are experimental, exploratory, and always singular.

192 pp, sewn, 170 x 240mm, pbk, french flaps, 32 photographs, colour and b/w. ISBN 1 901866 22 X. The Lilliput Press, Dublin, 1999

Tea with Marcel Proust

Judy Kravis & Peter Morgan

Drink tea with Marcel Proust, dance with Mallarme, ride with Rimbaud’s drunken boat. An interview with a dead novelist, a poet reincarnated, a novel retold, french lessons and letters, with collage and photomontages. French writers reinvented in words and pictures. To be consumed with madeleine, absinthe, opium, according to taste.

76pp, perfect bound, 210 x 244mm, pbk, french flaps, colour and b/w photographs. Edition of 900. ISBN 0 9519358 1 X. Road books, 1993.

Teaching Literature: Writers and Teachers Talking

Judy Kravis

What happens when students read literature? How do teachers teach literature? What happens to literature when it is taught? 24 interviews and introduction. Contributors include Grace Paley, Edmund White, Hermione Lee, Andrei Codrescu and Guy Davenport.

276pp, sewn, 155 x 222mm, pbk. ISBN 85918 026 4 24 b/w photographs. Cork University Press, 1995