13 x 15 in, 340 x 380 mm, 32pp Letterpress with Walbaum type and various decorative wood-typefaces, including 14 woodcuts, ( 7 colour and 7 black & white blocks).
Printed on 200gsm Stockwell cartridge paper, End-paper handmade in Vietnam by Doa Van Chi. Case-bound and blind-embossed slipcase. In an edition of 60.

Among the newest works in Simon Redington’s London studio are two self-portrait etchings showing the artist posed against the kaleidoscopic townscape of Hanoi, where he now spends half of the year. Figures framed in urban backgrounds are nothing new in this artist’s work, but the spiky tensions that have for a decade characterised his London imagery have relaxed somewhat. The real giveaway is in the letterpress slogans slapped boldly across the images. One says ‘Zen Baby’; the second reads ‘Nguoi Nuoc Ngoai’, Vietnamese for ‘Foreigner’. Happily uprooted from his native UK, the artist sees the world from a new viewpoint. His new book – a woodcut-illustrated version of Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant suggests a happier frame of mind. Gone are the harrowingly Kirchneresque psychodramas of 1989’s HANGMAN and the mordant social satire of the BUST and HOSTEL series from the mid-1990’s. In their place is a more subtle, rhythmic style, suggestive of puppet figures and folk art, with one foot in Oriental traditions. It is no surprise that Redington has been immersing himself in the imagery and mythology of Vietnamese art and culture. What is surprising is that this has prompted him to tackle a classic Western text. Redington recalls his strong sense, upon seeing a ‘traditionally’ illustrated version of the story, of how fey, pallid water-colours failed to do justice to the text. The fourteen images in the Kamikaze Press’s version manage to be simultaneously stark and joyous, and succeed in reclaiming the wit and bite of Wilde’s bold fable.’

Jim Anderson, Printmaking Today 2001