Joyce Campbell

Joyce Campbell launched her Brittle City Press, a new short-run analogue publication venture based in her Morningside garage/studio, at mothermother gallery on the 10th April 2022.

At the heart of the studio are an Asbern cylinder proof press and a substantial collection of vintage wood and lead type. To these foundational publication technologies, Campbell has added a laser cutter, a cnc router and facilities for making photopolymer plates. Brittle City Press thus combines print technologies ancient and very new to open up a wide field of possibility within short-run publication.

“We bring these technologies to our collaborations with and between artists, such that the tactile act of printing informs the form and function of our books. The press is committed to supporting a diversity of voices, to providing the means to publish in a diversity of languages, and to recuperating those bodies of knowledge we will need to rebuild our shattered earth once the reign of technocapitalist patriarchy comes to its inevitable, messy end. Big goals, small press. Brittle City Press is one of a planned suite of imprints emerging from my Morningside print studio under the umbrella of the Wooden and Leaden Publishing house.” says Joyce

Wooden and Leaden does not seek out collaborations so much as remaining receptive to them. It supports projects that are in keeping with its core objective, which is to expand the range of available creative literature being made in Tamaki Makaurau and to expand access to analogue short run publication experience for creatives working in the region. Planned projects/imprints include both adult and children’s literature, publications related to music, and publications authored by neurodivergent creators. 

Wooden and Leaden are currently augmenting a library of type to include type sets with macrons to enable publication by creatives working in Pacific languages and building typography skills to support linguistic diversity more broadly in our short run and analogue publications that we might provide publishing opportunities for writers in languages representative of the diversity of Tāmaki Makaurau’s people.

Joyce Campbell is represented by Two Room Gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau.