Louise Bourgeois: Stitches in Time August Projects/IMMA, London 2003 pp106, h/b Stg£12.90/ e19.00 ills 51col & ills 22 b/w. Pocket Book format ISBN 1-902854-24-1 Readability: 5 Reference Use: 3 Design & Durability: 5 Quality of Plates: 5 This is a very attractive-looking small book, a mini coffee table book really, which contain a substantial essay by the Tate curator Frances Morris, a brief introduction by Brenda McParland, a useful chronology, and a bibliography which is limited to books and exhibition catalogues. The essay is informative and tactful (i.e. it doesn’t deal with the awkward stuff, such as the artist’s use of the Feminist Movement, her cavalier claims of being abused – her father having a mistress is Bourgeois’ definition of this term – or the relationship of her career to that of her husband, the art historian Robert Goldwater, one of the foremost specialists in Tribal Art. Bourgeois’ first sculpture exhibition is clearly influenced by such work, and her career clearly helped by his contacts). The reproductions are excellent, as is the design. One major quibble is the reference use: the block of colour plates in the middle of the book is followed by a list of these reproductions, but neither the 19 plates in the curator’s essay, nor any of the plates in the other ten photo essays, are individually referenced by an index. The Forgotten Irish Artist: William Docherty Weir 1863-1903 Cleft Gallery Donaghadee 2003 pp.30, h/b Stg£12.00/e17.50 ills 26 col & ills 1 b/w. Oblong format Readability: 3 Reference Use: 2 Design & Durability: 4 Quality of Plates: 4 Weir was a professional lithographic artist who designed posters for the Belfast firm of David Allen; and who painted in his spare time. The gallery owner Bill Morrison purchased his collected works, and this catalogue presumably reproduces a selection of them. There is a one-page introduction by the Ulster Museum’s Martyn Anglesea, and a two-page essay by the gallery owner. Weir seems to have been a competent but uninspiring Sunday painter, though the few art nouveau style posters reproduced suggest that his graphic work might be worth exploring. No ISBN number. No list of illustrations. Crawford Open 1-4, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery Cork/Gandon Editions, 2003 pp.288, p/b e20.00. Square format ills approx 118 col. ISBN 0946846855 Readability: 3 Reference Use: 5 Design & Durability: 4 Quality of Plates: 4 This is a record of the first four annual, juried exhibitions at the Crawford. Gandon Editions, who published the similar EV+A catalogue, here use a similar overall format, in that there is an essay at the beginning, this time by Peter Murray, which is split into four parts, and briefly mentions everybody in the four exhibitions (no mean feat, but not nessessarily an illuminating read) followed by an A –Z of the artists, each one having a full-page colour image, and a page which contains a thumbnail biography, and a brief statement, should they want to provide one. Unlike the Limerick tome, this is fully referenced to include the essays. An Irish Eye: Landscapes of Fact & Imagination Solomon Gallery, Dublin, 2003 pp. 36, ills 28 col. Square format p/b. Readability: 4 Reference Use: 2 Design & Durability: 4 Quality of Plates: 4 Catalogue to the Solomon Gallery exhibition at Cape Town, South Africa, which exhibited works by twenty-nine largely 20th-century artists, ranging from Yeats, Blackshaw and Crozier, to Francis and Teskey. It contains a two-page introduction by Director of the Dublin City Gallery – the Hugh Lane, Barbara Dawson and brief biographical notes on each painter. No ISBN number, no list of illustrations or artists. No bibliography. Hector McDonnell Blackstaff Press/MAGNI, 2003 pp.60, h/b Stg£ 12.99 / e19.00 Oblong format ills 12 col. ISBN 0-85640751-8 Readability: 4 Reference Use: 3 Design & Durability: 5 Quality of Plates: 5 This is one of MAGNI’s better publications. The artist is a genre painter (interiors, exteriors etc) born the younger son of the Earl and Countess of Antrim. The book contains a brief foreword by John Julius Norwich, a biographical essay by Martin Anglesea (he’s been busy), an essay on the work by Bernd Krimmel, a checklist of the eighty-seven works in the retrospective exhibition, an exhibition checklist doubling as a bibliography and, most usefully, a chronological list of McDonnell’s works, stretching from 1963 to the present day. It’s pity that there aren’t more illustrations though. Unfortunately the twelve illustrations in the book are not referenced to either the checklist or the chronology, and the dates for a number of paintings in the chronological list are those of the first gallery showing, as opposed to the date of composition, or vice versa. (For example Ground Zero, September 2001 is credited on the illustration as being 2003, but in the checklist as being exhibited in 2002). Brian McAvera is a playwright and an art critic