100 Years Ago Today is an ongoing series of collaborations between friends, artists, writers, musicians, poets, and printmakers. Projects include publications, exhibitions, music, and more. These projects reconsider subjects that have become obscured with the passing of time. By drawing together images, writing and the individual perspectives of the invited artists, these ideas encourage a renewed interest in things which have been overlooked.
symbols postcard 2
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Aleana Egan
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Postcard with artwork by Aleana Egan and a poem by Ursula K. Le Guin considerately selected by Eoin Dara. Poem reprinted with permission from Ginger Clark Literary, LLC, with thanks to Ursula K. Le Guin Literary Trust. Project supported by FalseFront, Portland, OR.
Posted free of charge with USPS’s 2021 Ursula K. Le Guin commemorative stamp, while available (one per order). Email 100yrsagotoday@gmail.com to order or contact through Instagram or Twitter.
Edition of 100. A6 digital print. Published November 2021.
symbols postcard
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Aleana Egan
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Postcard with artwork by Aleana Egan and a quote from Iris Murdoch interviewed by William Kent Rose from A Tiny Corner in The House of Fiction: Conversations with Iris Murdoch (University of South Carolina Press, 2003). Artwork originally commissioned by Philosophy by Postcard, 2019.
Posted free of charge with An Post’s 2019 Iris Murdoch centenary stamp, while available (one per order). Email 100yrsagotoday@gmail.com to order or contact through Instagram or Twitter.
Edition of 200. A6 digital print. Published March 2020.
Standing Above Every Thing / idle days and minor battles was launched in the Zoological Museum in Trinity College Dublin in November 2018.
Wayfarer Books conducted an interview with Ruth Clinton, Michael Hill and Niamh Moriarty on the themes explored in Standing Above Every Thing / idle days and minor battles. You can read it here.
Standing Above Every Thing
idle days and minor battles
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Ruth Clinton
Michael Hill
Niamh Moriarty
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Standing Above Every Thing / idle days and minor battles is a new publication made in collaboration between Ruth Clinton, Michael Hill and Niamh Moriarty. Using archival photographs, lantern slides and journal entries by Richard W.G. Hingston (1887-1966), from the Trinity College Dublin archives, the book surveys the life of this intrepid individual through the present-day lenses of conservation, colonialism and deep time.
County Cork-born Hingston was a naturalist, explorer and surgeon, who worked as a medical officer for the British Empire army during the first and second World Wars. While stationed in the Middle East during WWI, he expressed in his journal entries a desire to escape the war and to continue his scientific studies of fauna and their behaviours. Like many men of that era, Hingston sought out adventures to remote lands following the war. In 1924, he joined the ill-fated British expedition to 'conquer' Mount Everest. Along the treacherous Himalayan foothills, Hingston collected thousands of insect and plant specimens along with some small mammals, reptiles and birds. At 20,000 feet, he became the first westerner to identify the Himalayan Jumping Spider, thought to be the highest living resident on Earth.
This publication compiles numerous images from Hingston's travels to the Himalayas and neighbouring Pamir mountain range, with many of his photographs published here for the first time. The texts, relayed through the voices of insect and arachnid specimens, convey experiences of time, ecology, displacement, conflict, and loss.
The hardback book is the second published collaboration between Ruth Clinton, Michael Hill and Niamh Moriarty, following Wound with a Tear (2016), also produced by 100 Years Ago Today. Printed in an edition of 200 copies, Standing Above Every Thing / idle days and minor battles, includes a glow in the dark screenprinted bookmark, risograph poster/dust jacket, and additional printed inserts. The publication and its launch are supported by Trinity College Dublin, through the Provost’s Academic Development Fund, and Fingal County Council.
Thursday Street was launched as part of the From the Author series at Good Press, Glasgow, with a presentation of research materials from the project.
Thursday Street
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Michael Hill
Kevin Kirwan
Francis Upritchard
Sam Venables
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"It is not easy to cross from your world into this, but there are places where they touch...Wasteland and boundaries - places that are neither one thing nor the other. These are the gates of Elidor." Alan Garner’s 1962 lost radio play (and later children’s novel), Elidor, tells the story of a group of young siblings who experience a transcendent awakening through a journey into an alternate realm. They travel from the post-industrial city ruins of their home into a mystical land, which is also bleak and seemingly beyond revival. A ragged musician’s hypnotic song lures the children away from their familiar surroundings, and implores them to re-enact an ancient rite in order to purge the corruption that has taken hold of the land.
Thursday Street revisits the narrative of Elidor with photographs of boundary crossings and self-realisation by Kevin Kirwan, interspersed with drawings of ordinary objects transformed into ritual instruments by Francis Upritchard. Sam Venables' hand-painted text and marbling are overlaid on a map of the area from which the children in Elidor are transported to a distant land, and Michael Hill's essay explores the connections with this story and the otherworldly awakenings in the margins of the Smiths' music.
Thursday Street is an edition of 150 copies. 210 x 148 mm in cellophane stickered sleeve, 20 pages with half-size cover, folded 400 x 277 mm risograph poster printed by Studio Or, and 105 x 148 mm postcard. Released March 2017. SOLD OUT.
My Tape’s Gone
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Leigh Arthur
Michael Hill
Sarah Usher
Ruan van Vliet
100 Years Ago Today House Band feat. Seán Goucher, Michael Hill, Eddie Kenrick, Neil Mooney
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My Tape's Gone is a tribute to one of Manchester's most vibrant but unsung bands, The Freshies!
Along with an introductory text on the band by Michael Hill, there is a double-sided A3 risograph poster with imagery by Leigh Arthur, Sarah Usher and Ruan van Vliet, and a cassette tape with new recordings of two Freshies songs by Seán Goucher, Michael Hill, Eddie Kenrick, Neil Mooney.
Four page black and white digitally printed zine (206 x 145 mm), double-sided two-colour risograph poster (416 x 294 mm), with two audio recordings (5 mins total) on coloured cassette tape, all placed in sealed poly-bag with stickered header. Every order of the zine will receive an email with a link to download the two tracks as high quality MP3s.
Second edition of 100 copies with pink riso and cassette.
First edition of 100 copies with blue riso and cassette: SOLD OUT
Mummers
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Timothy Dodd
Michael Hill
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Hand-stitched zine with poems by Timothy Dodd and photographs by Michael Hill taken in the Mummers Museum, Philadelphia in 2016.
A5, black and white, 12 pages. Edition of 100. SOLD OUT.
Wound With A Tear
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Ruth Clinton & Niamh Moriarty
Jane Lives
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Wound with a Tear is collaboration between Ruth Clinton, Michael Hill and Niamh Moriarty.
The book serves as a document of Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty's 2014 project in Trinity College Dublin that investigated the ongoing deterioration and renewal of the institution's archives, its buildings and their inhabitants. The book comprises Interdepartmental Memoranda, which guide the reader through this Wildean romance, and photographs of the campus that highlight the growth, decay, patterning, chaos, dust, mould, and the expanse of knowledge embedded within this historical setting.
Jane Lives has contributed the title page illustration and typography.
Wound with a Tear is an edition of 100 unique hand-stitched copies, with screen-printed covers. SOLD OUT.