Asia Art Archive welcomes London-based zine librarians Holly Callaghan, Nicola Cook, and Loesja Vigour to our Residency Programme, taking place in conjunction with the launch of our zine collection in AAA Library.

Callaghan has established and developed the zine collections at Stuart Hall Library and Tate Library; Cook and Vigour have built the zine collection at the Wellcome Collection. The common focus of their practice is to showcase zines as a representation of marginalised voices in public institutions. They are part of UK and Ireland Zine Librarians, a voluntary group set up in 2015 to lead discussions on zine collecting, cataloguing, and circulation in public libraries and private collections. They often collaborate to deliver zine reading groups and facilitate zine cataloguing workshops.

During their residency, Callaghan, Cook, and Vigour conduct research on zine practices in Hong Kong, and will give a public talk, “Cata-log-in Zines,” with Hong Kong–based art publishing collective Display Distribute on Tuesday, 9 April, at AAA.

Following the talk, a cataloguing workshop (by invitation only) will take place on Thursday, 11 April. If you are interested in the workshop, please contact Elaine Lin at elaine@aaa.org.hk.

This residency is developed by AAA in partnership with the Wellcome Trust. The programme is part of Contagious Cities, an international collaborative project that aims to support locally grounded conversations around the global challenges of epidemic preparedness. The project proposes a reading between the notion of contagion, and zines as an art medium that spreads ideas without control.

Image: Asia Art Archive zine collection. Photo: Stephen Lam.

Holly Callaghan is Senior Liaison Librarian at Tate Library where she acquires, catalogues, and provides access to library materials focusing on contemporary international art. She developed the zine collection at Tate in 2014 and previously established the zine collection at INIVA’s Stuart Hall Library with Sonia Hope. In 2015, she co-founded the UK and Ireland Zine Librarians group with Leila Kassir and edited the first issue of the UK and Ireland Zine Librarians zine. Callaghan is also a maker of queer DIY zines and comics about class, body positivity, pop culture, and mental health.

Nicola Cook began sourcing and collecting zines for Wellcome Library in 2016, to complement the library's existing graphic medicine holdings and to diversify the perspectives of health in the collection. Along with Loesja Vigour, she devised cataloguing procedures and held a series of group cataloguing workshops, effectively working through and making available the hundreds of zines acquired during that time. In late 2018, Cook began a secondment at Tate Library, and currently works alongside Holly Callaghan as a Senior Liaison Librarian.

Loesja Vigour is a Librarian at Wellcome Collection, where she develops and manages the zine collection. She also oversees the journals collection, organises public programmes, and catalogues ephemera, grey literature, and rare pamphlets. She organised Wellcome’s first Pop-Up Zine Library and all-day Zine Club with Nicola Cook, showcasing the library’s growing collection of zines focused around the lived experience of the human condition and the links between science, medicine, life, and art.