Zine Review: Fishy Encounters
Fishy Encounters
Gina Ulgen
https://www.instagram.com/paper_draper/Fishy Encounters is an A6 full-colour zine of collage style art with a distinctly fishy theme.
I will do my best not to make any fishy puns in the course of this review.
Fishy Encounters takes you right into the content of the zine and carries you all the way through to the end with a collage occupying every page – even the front inside cover. Inside, you will find a mostly wordless (save for words that are on/a part of the collages) zine with strange and, I found, often amusing combinations of images.
I’m not sure if I’m supposed to find the images amusing or something else, but I appreciate the smiles nonetheless. I’m not particularly attracted to fish or the ocean on a larger scale, but I count that as a plus that I still found enjoyment in this.
In fact, it reminds me of my friend Fishspit, who is the king of collage envelope art in my eyes.
The two collages I enjoyed the most were black and white photos with ‘Fig. 2’ and ‘Fig. 4’ beneath them as well as descriptions for what is happening in the pictures. Fish pictures are put in just the right spots to make it funny, but the real special touch is that Gina found the word ‘fish’ in similar small fonts to cover certain words. For instance, Fig. 2 has been made into ‘Fig. 2 – Bathing a Fish’ thanks to that tiny word ‘fish’ being put over the original text.
I hope I’m making sense with that. Bottom line, I found the collage with a man who has a fish on the lead with ‘Fig. 4 – Training a Fish. Teaching him to come to heel when called’ quite funny.
I do have one small nitpick in the lack of contact details. ‘Gina Ulgen’ is printed on the back, so you’re not left completely in the dark, but I have become a bit spoiled and like direct links to things.
Fishy Encounters is a short zine that made me smile a lot. If you like collage art, fish, or something a bit different, check out this zine.
Zine Review: The 24-Hour Zine
The 24-Hour Zine
Latibule
https://www.instagram.com/latibule_art/The 24-Hour Zine is an A6 full-colour zine full of collages and writing based on suggestions made by other people.
Full disclosure: Latibule and I livestreamed together on Instagram during part of the making of this zine, and the idea of taking suggestions from people came from me.
The 24-Hour Zine opens with an explanation of the challenge (a 24-page zine made in 24-hours) and how Latibule created most pages base on prompts from her Instagram followers. I feel weird mentioning how much I like this idea given the circumstances, but I really do and would love to both do it more myself and see it done more by others.
With prompts like ‘sunflowers’ and ‘utopia’, this zine is full of colour. As a primarily collage zine of this style, I would expect it to be in colour, but I’ll still say that printing it in black and white would have taken something away from it. How Latibule interprets the prompts – especially prompts with less obvious colour associations – makes the zine all the more interesting.
Save for the middle spread, each page has its own prompt. Most of the prompts are from others – each idea credited to the person’s Instagram handle. However, some pages are Latibule’s own. With people coming up with unrelated prompts in the mix, quite a few different emotions are expressed in paper, washi tape, drawings, and sometimes words.
I’ve been enjoying flipping through this zine again and again. There is something relaxing about taking in all the elements of the various collages.
If this sounds like something you’d like to check out, then definitely pick a copy up and get lost in its pages.
