Illustration & the Paper Artefact
4th–6th September 2025

The contributors to this conference responded to our call to bring together scholars and practitioners working in the visual arts to identify historical, aesthetic, social and environmental contexts within which the materiality of paper works to enhance processes of illustration. 

We were particularly interested in paper as artefact and what this term means in a world where material ephemerality works in conjunction with digital imprint. 

Paper’s properties—of folding, cutting, collaging, of tactility and surface - afford the construction of narrative, the decolonisation of power, and the support of care and wellbeing. 

Some of our papers and workshops considered the radical potential of paper as everyday material or the necessity to archive and preserve, while other presenters are working through notions of value that are imbued in paper and all its disseminative applications. 

This conference highlighted myriad qualities of paper, evoking further interest in its discursive materiality and in its abstract properties that often go unnoticed. 

~ Carolyn Shapiro Associate Professor of Visual Culture Falmouth School of Art

The Organising Committee and thanks
here

Keynote Speakers
Shaq Koyok and Tim Knowles
Moderated by Ivan Tacey and Duncan Cameron
abstracts

Schedule
Thursday 4th September: Panel 1:
John Kilburn, Ellie Robinson-Carter, Sian Goddard, Gary Hodge, Darren Aoki, Sophie Timms, Ebony Underwood.
Moderated by Sheena Calvert.
abstracts

Friday 5th September: Panels 2-5
Desdemona McCannon & Sheena Calvert, Devon Tipping, Christina Dong, Sarah Nesti Willard, Shamma Abdulla Nasser Alnuaimi, Amy Goodwin, Leah Gouget-Levy, Ben Whyman, Tracey Gutteridge, Megan Fry. 
Moderators: Vincent Larkin, John Kilburn, Jeannie Sinclair, Rachel Tyler. 

abstracts

Saturday 6th September: Panels 6-10   

Marei Schweitzer, Mark Curtis Hughes, Kimberley Ellen Hall, David Lemm, Benjamin Wright, Vincent Larkin, Ananya Gupta, Ksenia Kopalova, Georgie Bennett, Jeanie Sinclair
Moderators: Vincent Larkin, Carolyn Shapiro, Nanette Hoogslag.

abstracts

Workshops

Posters

The Paper Artefact Exhibition Abstract & images

Posters & paper artefacts: abstract and images

Publishers Thoroughfare
featuring Guillemot Press, Journal of Illustration, Atlantic Press and Bloomsbury.