Oriole Press

An artists’ imprint for experimental reading and writing.

Oriole Press is run by artist, designer & facilitator francis burger, and friends. It exists to make room for love letters from infatuated disciples, for books about books, and whip scorpions.

Oriole Press is named after the Black-Headed Oriole that frequents the pockets of broad-leaved endemics that hug the north-facing (frost-sheltered) ridges of Johannesburg’s peri-urban neighbourhoods – the Oriole stays a little out of sight but pronounces itself through its loud whistles and imitations, and its distinctive ‘liquid-sounding warble’ (a perfect description via wikipedia and a recording of the call below, the warble is about mid-way).

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Oriole Press is run by artist, designer & facilitator francis burger, and friends. It exists to make room

All Publications

aLL pUbLicationS:

All Publications2024

Drawing is still writing. Nyakallo Maleke, 2024. Drawings and writing, risograph printed booklet. Go to Drawing is Still Writing

All Publications2023

Meteorites. A book of poems by Lavendrhi Arumugam, 2023. Co-published with edition~verso.
Go to Meteorites

Addressed to its intended. Erin Honeycutt and francis burger, 2023. Co-published with Cutt Press. Go to Addressed to its intended

Light Passes. 2023. A collection of texts, images and conversations gathered by Gretchen Blegen with contributions by Zwoisy Mears-Clarke and Emese Csornai, Ana Laura Lozza & Bárbara Hang, Bettina Malcomess, Kirbie Bennett and Jamie Wanzek. Go to Light Passes

Scroll to view all publications in detail.

All PublicationsDrawing is Still Writing

DRAWING
IS STILL
WRITING

Drawing is still writing, Nyakallo Maleke. 32 pages with loose inserts, risograph printed in an edition of 40 at Keleketla/Wits School of Arts. Single Thread sewn by Pulp Paperworks. Publication design & editing by francis burger. Published by Oriole Press in collaboration with Nyakallo Maleke. Johannesburg. 2023. ISBN 978-0-7961-3650-3

South Africa R350.00
UK & Eu €20
All prices exclude shipping

Image: Details from ‘Drawing is still writing’, Nyakallo Maleke, 2023.

Drawing is still writing shares a series of drawings performed for the risograph printer over a few hot days and nights in summer 2023. The drawings were collated alongside a short text ‘Draw’, written by Maleke earlier in the year, and the prompts, notes and marks that emerged from their sandwich’ing.

“Drawing has always been conversational, an outspoken friend.”

—‘Draw’, Nyakallo Maleke, 2023

Image: Details from ‘Drawing is still writing’, Nyakallo Maleke, 2023.

Drawing is still writing is one of many careful, specific experiments within Maleke’s ongoing practice of responsive mark-making and compilation – a growing lexicon of “adapting to spaces that refuse to change”, of re-telling, re-learning, re-imagining... of mapping, repetition, layering, and laying out... of vulnerability, and ‘learning to re...st’.

*Nyakallo Maleke is an artist, writer and cyclist from Johannesburg.

Colophon

Drawing is still writing
Nyakallo Maleke
2023

32 pages with loose inserts, risograph printed in an edition of 40.

publication design & editing by francis burger

printed at the Wits School of Arts with the RISO SF5030 acquired by Keleketla! Library and Another Roadmap Africa Cluster with additional ink drums by Wits Fine Art

Oriole Press in collaboration with Nyakallo Maleke

Johannesburg

2023

ISBN 978-0-7961-3650-3

Image: Poster for ‘Drawing is still writing’, reading event, Nyakallo Maleke & francis burger, 2023. Hosted at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (more).

All PublicationsMeteorites
METEORITES

Meteorites, a book of poems by Lavendhri Arumugam, with an essay and illustrations by francis burger. 2023.

Softcover, 20 pages, with 6 hand-stamped colour plates and Riso printed cover. Edition of 50. Printed in Johannesburg and Berlin. Published by Oriole Press and edition~verso, Johannesburg, 2023.

South Africa R450

Europe & UK €30

Prices exclude shipping.
To order email francis at oriolepress@proton.me

Image: The Wrong Doers & Friday on the Hill details from L, Arumugam, ‘Meteorites’. 2023.

Meteorites is a book of poems about childhood, curiousity, and reproach, written by Lavendhri Arumugam with illustrations and an essay by francis burger.

They made an aunty of me–
busy, looking, picking, hiding
retrievable
treasures for later.

—from Four PM, Lavendhri Arumugam, Meteorites, 2023

Meteorites with pages from Plain Furniture, Peter Clarke. 1990. Cape Town: Snail Press, the ‘little magazine’ IZWI no. 6 (eds. Phil du Plessis, Stephen Gray, Wilma Strockenström) with cover illustrations and poems by Clarke; and ‘Sue’s copy’ of an early Snail poem compendium by Snail Press founder Gus Ferguson.

Meteorites was written in relation to Plain Furniture, a collection of writings and graphics by South African artist Peter Clarke – poetic descriptions of encounters, memories and musings from across the artists’ life in Cape Town from the mid 1930s to the 1990s – published in 1991 by Gus Ferguson’s Snail Press, Plumstead, Cape Town.

“Life is at times bitter but often pleasant”

—from ‘Bokkems and Wine’, Peter Clarke, Plain Furniture, 1991

Each poem in the book is accompanied by a hand-stamped colour plate, printed with Sara-Aimee Verity of edition~verso with assistance of Michaela Verity, Boitumelo Phashe, and Bradley Cloete.

Image: Process images (wooden stamps made with recycled pine and lino) from the printmaking process at edition verso, 2023.

Lavendhri Arumugam is a writer, maker and curator who grew up in East London and Johannesburg (South Africa) and now lives and works in London (United Kingdom). Arumugam has a Masters in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University, and was a recipient of the London Writers Awards for Narrative Non-fiction in 2021. Arumugam is presently and continuously working on a non-fiction manuscript about cricket and fatherhood.

francis burger is an artist, designer, facilitator and experimental publisher (Oriole Press) based in Johannesburg.

Image: Event poster for Meteorites publication launch at Hopscotch Reading Room, Berlin, July 2023.

Colophon

Meteorites
Lavendhri Arumugam
2023

Design and illustrations by francis burger

Conceptualised and supported as a part of 'Papertrails', presented by The Independent Publishing Project with Jonah Sack at A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town, 2022

Colour plates printed at edition~verso with Sara-Aimee Verity, assisted by Michaela Verity, Boitumelo Phashe, and Bradley Cloete; Inners printed by Postnet Norwood; Covers printed by Drucken3000

With thanks to Sebastian Borckenhagen, Sue Clark, Theron, Lara, and to Siddartha Lokanandi and Erin Honeycutt (Cutt Press) at Hopscotch Reading Room, Berlin.

Oriole Press & edition~verso

Johannesburg

978-0-6397-9041-1

Publications Addressed to its intended

addressed to
its intended -

Addressed to its intended, texts and images by Erin Honeycutt and francis burger. 15 pages and cut flower in printed envelope, Risograph printed in burgundy ink. Edition of 50. Printed at Cutt Press, Kurfürstenstraße. Published by Oriole Press and Cutt Press, Berlin, 2023.

South Africa R250
Europe & UK €15Prices exclude shipping
Available in Berlin from @Cutt_Press

Addressed to its intended collects written and graphic negotiations of thresholds and bodily announcements – of skin, paper, 'the book', bodies, speaking, letters, undergrowth.

Featuring the rough tongue of a holy ghost cat, a island cemetery, a few circling dogs, and many textures gathered on a lino-roller, from the garden of an extended family home in Västra Götalands county in Sweden.

...if only there was an island cat on this Cemetery island who would walk up to me and with its scruffy holy tongue lick a piece of me, that would be my skin, and there, skin to tongue, living with the living, creature to creature, speech to touch, inner surface to outer surface, we would truly speak.

—‘Skin diaries’, in ‘Addressed to its intended’, by Erin Honeycutt and francis burger, 2023.

Edition of 50, risograph printed in burgundy ink on various materials and bound by an envelope. Texts and images by Erin Honeycutt and francis burger, with excerpts from Italo Calvino, José Saramago, and a notebook drawing by Sara-Aimee Verity.

no wonder
how mice
eat the glue off paper
read with their teeth

—from ‘no wonder’, in ‘Addressed to its intended’, Erin Honeycutt and francis burger, 2023

i look around and all the
little heads of flowers
are bobbing their heads
as if looking up to some thing above and waiting to be given something,
the way a dog anticipates
but this is roses,
gardenias,
chrysanthemums,
not dogs.

—‘Skin diaries’, in ‘Addressed to its intended’, by Erin Honeycutt and francis burger, 2023.

Colophon

Addressed to its intended
Erin Honeycutt and francis burger
2023

15 loose pages with folded elements and cut flower shape in brown tissue paper, green smiley face sticker, and an A6 piece of acetate, bound in a printed C5 envelope.

Risograph printed in Berlin at Cutt Press, Kurfürstenstraße

Edition of 50

Published by Oriole Press and Cutt Press

Berlin

Publications Addressed to its intended

Light Passes

An audio version of the publication, with spoken transcripts by each contributor and a downloadable pdf is available on bandcamp (highly recommended).

Light Passes, initiated and gathered by Gretchen Blegen. Softcover, 95 pages. Edition of 40. Digitally printed in Berlin on an HP Indigo 7000 by AusDruck. Published by Oriole Press and Gretchen Blegen, 2023.

South Africa R500
Europe & UK €25
Prices exclude shipping

Light Passes is an eclectic collection of texts, images and conversations surrounding light and its varied presences across artistic practice, choreography, land, power and memory.

Light Passes was initiated and gathered by transdisciplinary artist Gretchen Blegen (Berlin), and began as a series of exchanges with artist and writer Bettina Malcomess. The publication expanded across 2022 with collaborative contributions by choreographer Zwoisy Mears-Clarke (Rösrath) and lighting designer Emese Csornai (Berlin), performing artist duo Ana Laura Lozza & Bárbara Hang (Berlin and Buenos Aires), artist and writer Bettina Malcomess(Johannesburg), print and radio journalists Kirbie Bennett and Jamie Wanzek (Durango). Light Passes was produced in collaboration with Oriole Press.

“The more I work with light in performance and dance, the more I associate light with something both ephemeral and contextual. Light is a synonym for perception, grounded in its own histories and relationalities. I feel light as a limitless vocabulary of possibilities that reaches well beyond the task of making things visible or creating an effect. It digs deep into psychosomatic body memories of place and experience, warmth and sensation

[...]

Through the leaves, through the window to the page. A shimmer of possibilities in seemingly impossible states. 144 years after the invention of the light bulb. A glitch in the social order after sundown. A remembrance of the circadian rhythm. Light as it passes through, as it flows”

—from Light Passes, Prologue, Gretchen Blegen 2023

Details and inserts from Light Passes, 2023.

Digital photograph from ‘Fade into Rhythm' by Ana Laura Lozza & Bárbara Hang, 2023.

“Someone trying to read while the lights go on AND OFF
Eyes at work
Conversations on satellites
Things to touch in darkness
Eyes looking with lids shut
Someone always looking through the camera
Always old technology devices laying around
Five people in the forest at night
Four people on a sofa looking at a wall petting objects on their laps
Two fishes and several rats
Hands feeling eyeballs”

—from Fade into Rhythm by Ana Laura Lozza & Bárbara Hang.

Colophon

Light Passes

Initiated and gathered by Gretchen Blegen
Contributions by Zwoisy Mears-Clarke and Emese Csornai, Ana Laura Lozza & Bárbara Hang, Bettina Malcomess, Kirbie Bennett and Jamie Wanzek
Publication designed by Francis Burger

95p, printed by AusDruck, Berlin, on HP Indigo 7000, with trimmed acetate and colour tissue paper inserts, two folded letters, and a hand written note.

Additional editing by Mars Dietz, Zinzi Buchanan, Bettina Malcomess

Accessibility consultation by Quiplash

Post sound production and audio mastering by Lane Hots

Published by Oriole Press in collaboration with Gretchen Blegen

CC-BY-ND

2023

ISBN 978-0-7961-1727-4

Light Passes was made possible through the #TakeCare and #TakeHeart research grants from the Performing Arts Fund financed by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media within the framework of NEUSTART KULTUR and BACKBONE Berlin.
Audio publication and digital download at www.lightpasses.bandcamp.com

Contact & Newsletter

ContactContact francis on fmburger(at)gmail.com or send me a message here
Follow Oriole Press via instagram @oriole_press

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Oriole Press
Johannesburg, 2001.
South Africa.