Because of Love: Franko B’s Story
- Year
- 2018
- Author/Artist
Franko B
- ISBN
- 978-0-9935611-5-3
Edited by Lois Keidan and Megan Vaughan, with a preface by Tim Etchells, designed by David Caines, illustrated by Giuditta Fullone.
Published by Live Art Development Agency, 2018
164 pages, paperback with colour illustrations throughout
I wanted to tell my story, or more like try to make sense of what my story was, or what I thought it was.
Franko B is an extraordinary, internationally acclaimed artist who has been making drawings, installations, sculptures, and performances for over 30 years. Because of Love tells the story of his childhood in Italy in an orphanage and at the hands of his abusive family, his journey to London as a young man, his return to Italy many years later as an accomplished artist, and, in between, the story of his life and loves and his becoming an artist.
About the book
Because of Love is edited by Lois Keidan and Megan Vaughan, with a preface by Tim Etchells, designed by David Caines, illustrated by Giuditta Fullone, and published by Live Art Development Agency, 2018.
The title has sold out and a further reprint is not planned at this time. All enquiries should be directed to LADA. Because of Love is available in LADA’s Study Room in Bethnal Green.
View Study Room Catalogue entryAndrea Pagnes responds to 'Because of Love’
Page after page, Franko recalls what it means to survive and learn to live, because of love. His words frame fragments of the beauty of his violated landscapes … With this book, Franko offers us his direct testimony of how vital is for an artist to draw inspiration from the hardest life struggles and transform them into a magmatic material to create thought-provoking, genuine art where the personal becomes universal.
Read the full textFranko B’s was a painful, unavoidably compromised childhood - a tale in which the calm and quiet features of a family have fled, and he is dropped into a future that he had to forge for himself. Stolen from a conventional destiny, his body rises to become a glorious body - a body of art. It is also an eternal body, since there is a bond between the physical body and the art body. This is the condition of his freedom.
Launch Event
Because of Love was launched at an event at LADA on Valentine’s Day 2018 (14th February) with contributions from Marcia Farquhar, Anna Thew and Dominic Johnson. Listen to the audio from the launch here:
It’s a truly bewildering journey, brutal at times both as life and as punk literature – a back and forth from orphanage to abusive family home, to squat, to rave, club scene, AIDS activism, political protest and art practice – a trail that manages to be alien and yet somehow entirely recognisable
Franko B has the capability of showing us extreme strength and fragility at the same time. This can touch our heart at a very profound level.
Franko B is the kindest and gentlest of men —his work, however, is utterly unnerving. This book provides important clues to understanding the gap between the two, and why we should pay attention.
Banner image credit:
Because of Love: Franko B’s Story, Franko B, published by the Live Art Development Agency, 2018.
