Merry Christmas

With very best wishes for a very Merry Christmas

and a wonderful New Year.

A Unique Piece of Leather

It has been very quiet here as I have been occupied by other things, however I hope to be working and posting regularly about my books again.

I made a small book a few months ago called Makes No Sense about World War 1.  It proved to be popular and the edition of 20 have all gone.  As the topic of war seems to be one of my favourite subjects, I decided to make a unique copy for myself.

I sewed the book together in sections and put a black leather spine on it.  I wondered what to do with the cover and remembered I had a great piece of leather stashed away that I had bought as a dud  faulty piece because the black dye had not penetrated fully and had left a kind of tie-dye mark in one or two areas of the skin.  I thought it looked great and decided to use it for the covers of this book.

The front cover (above) also had two holes in the leather which I filled with
red acrylic paint.

Below is a view of the pattern on the back cover.

The final view shows the completed book covers.

Troops Depart for War

It seems I'm still not ready to be finished with commenting on World War I.  

It came to my attention recently that the letters DIE are part of the word 'SOLDIER'.

I've made a few books about the unbelievable loss of life by soldiers serving in WW1 and I couldn't resist making a little zine using this.

I printed an A4 Kraft paper page with the word Soldier in murky green and highlighted the letters DIE in black.  I placed the words in columns like a battalion marching off to war.

The page was then folded and placed into a Kraft card cover onto which I 

glued an image of a WWI commemorative stamp which carries the words 'Troops Depart'.

I'd be delighted to send one to anyone who sends me their postal address.  You can contact me by email through my website. 

Slim Chance

Last year I was very fortunate to work on a collaborative book with Jack Oudyn called Chance.  We really enjoyed working on that project and we'd both found the working method of the collaboration quite exciting.   We decided to use the same method and follow it up with another book related to 'Chance' this year.  We had been hoping to have it finished for the SLQ Book Fair in late June, but unfortunately I wasn't able to finish my pages in time due to the death of my mother.

Jack and I had been talking about the plight of refugees no longer being resettled in Australia and facing very uncertain futures.  We found this an interesting 'chance' topic and decided to use the same Kraft brown paper for the pages and the same Kraft card cover in a dos-a-dos format. Once again we exchanged alternate lines of text by email and  both responded with a drawing.  We agreed to use fresh turmeric, gesso, gouache, pencil.

Jack had used fresh turmeric in his work previously and suggested that we try using it and making a book which had an exotic spicy odour.   We found the pages did have a nice smell when they were finished, but even after keeping them in a sealed plastic bag, after a week or so the odour disappeared.  However the fresh turmeric was interesting to use as an art material and Jack used it very successfully in his work.  This is my favourite page of his, one I find powerful and beautiful.

A choice of freedom or death.  Jack Oudyn 

I experimented with turmeric but used less in the end as I wanted the blue of the sea to be predominant in my pages.   I started with the chance marks that resulted from a chopstick dipped in gesso and some of them looked a bit like jellyfish.  I had hoped they'd give some idea of movement through the water. One of my pages was inspired by a shot in the intro to the tv show The Vikings.

 A risky journey in a leaky boat.  Helen Malone

A choice of freedom or death.  Helen Malone

Jack produced some wonderful restrained drawings and I am so impressed with the way he was able to abstract the theme.  We included two lines from the second verse of our national anthem which say  For those who've come across the seas

We've boundless plains to share.

We've boundless plains to share.  Jack Oudyn

For those who've come across the seas.  Helen Malone

On each of our pages, there are a couple of words that have been translated into one of  a number of different languages.

 A land of hope on the horizon.  Jack Oudyn

For the cover, Jack made little embossings of a boat to which we added colour and he also found some reflective material to use for the cross.
Last time we made only one original of Chance which was acquired by the Manly Library in Sydney, however this time we thought ahead and made four originals, and I think two of them will remain in our own collections.
  

The Thirty Six Views of the Eiffel Tower

 

I was on the lower level of the Queensland Art Gallery last week when I was surprised to see a display case containing some books. Inside was a new acquisition for the QAG, a copy of the original 1902 edition of Henri Riviere's book of lithographs called Les Trente-Six Vues de la Tour Eiffel. Nine of the lithographs were also framed and displayed on an adjoining wall.

I was quite excited to see this as I have a copy of the book reprinted by Chronicle books and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in 2010 which I bought from the bookshop in the Louvre when I was staying with a Parisian friend in 2011. I was enchanted by these thirty six lithographs of Paris from the 1880's and 1890's.  

While visiting this friend in 2010 I had purchased a little flip book of illustrations of the Eiffel Tower being constructed.  My friend was surprised that I would want this little book as for her the Eiffel Tower is an abomination and she expressed disgust that this monstrosity had become the symbol and most famous monument of her city, and was known all over the world.

It was always a contentious structure with Parisians from the time building commenced in 1887 and I was intrigued to find that this attitude remained over 100 years later.

I left Paris and even France because the Eiffel Tower just annoyed me too much. 

Not only did you see it from everywhere, you found it everywhere made out of every known material, displayed in all the shop windows, an unavoidable and horrible nightmare.

Guy de Maupassant, La Vie Errante, 1890

Riviere's thirty six views of the Eiffel Tower were inspired by the Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji, thirty six woodcuts by Hokusai, made from 1831-1834.  As I was in Paris for a month I felt inspired to investigate all of Riviere's locations to discover how many still existed and still offered a view of the Eiffel Tower.  I wanted to see how much it dominated the skyline in 2011, if at all, and I hoped to have enough material to make a book of my own photographs - hopefully thirty six.  Many of the locations had disappeared or been renamed and many others no longer offered even a glimpse of the tower.  Along with the views of Riviere's that I was able to reproduce, I discovered many alternative views of my own and was able to make a 2011 version of Thirty Six Views.

The Thirty Six Views by Helen Malone

             Here are a couple of the views I was able to match. 

 In Riviere's lithographs the tower is not always easy to spot and my images are similar.

Riviere's first image

My first image taken at Place Charles de Gaulle-Etoile

                                                  Riviere's view from Quai de Passy

                                               My view from Quai de Passy 2011

                                                   Riviere's view Over the Rooftops

                                      My view over the Rooftops from Montmartre 2011

Riviere's image of the Quai du Javel

My view of Quai du Javel 2011

     A couple of the alternative images of the Eiffel Tower I discovered

From the Australian Embassy, Rue Jean Rey

Inside the Eiffel Tower

A bunch of Eiffel Towers held by a souvenir seller

in Avenue Gustave Eiffel

The Eiffel Tower glimpsed through the Arc de Triomphe

I wish I could always find such an absorbing and interesting project to work on while on holidays.

                                               

Another showing of 4 x 4

Following on from an exhibition in the Cairns Regional Gallery earlier in the year, a display of sculptural books by 4 South East Qld and 4 Far North Qld artists has been installed in the Brisbane Square Library, George Street, Brisbane.

The SEQ artists are Fiona Dempster, Susan Bowers, Adele Outteridge and myself, and the FNQ artists are Rose Rigley, Claudine Marzik, Barbara Dover and Rosie Miller.

I chose to make two poetic works - interpretations of Rimbaud's Drunken Boat and Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil as they are always good to represent sculpturally, and they also turned out to be a suitable choice for the library.  
My third piece is called Into the Void. 

The exhibition continues from 1 July to 30 September.

The 'abbe' Artists Book Conference will also take place in Brisbane from the 16th - 18th July.  There will be an associated Artists Book Fair on the Friday afternoon and Saturday.  Details can be found here 

A Great Book Weekend at SLQ

A highly anticipated artists book event on the calendar is the yearly event at SLQ sponsored by the Siganto Foundation, and this year's event was better than ever.   This year introduced us to Amir Brito Cador and his presentation on other Brazilian book artists which was a real treat and quite inspiring.  It also introduced us to performances of artists books, and we heard about the projects of newly completed and current SLQ Fellows. It was a really great day and I was obviously so absorbed I didn't think to take even one photo!

The Artists Book Fair held on the Sunday was also hugely enjoyable and successful.  I loved seeing other people's books and sharing a table with my friend and collaborator Jack Oudyn.  We had a range of our own books, some collaborative books and Jack had lots of zines.  Once again I had such a great time mixing with people and talking about books that I didn't think to even take 

a photo of our table.

Thank goodness for Doug Spowart who did take lots of photos and he and Vicki Cooper have written up a well illustrated account of the two day event on their blog here.

There is also an aptly titled blog post (Artists Books Extravaganza) on the 

SLQ Australian Library of Art blog here.   

How fortunate we are to have the State Library of Queensland and it's support from the Siganto Foundation, and we hope these Siganto events and the associated Artists Book Fair will continue.

I had made a little booklet/zine for the day titled Makes no Sense.  I had received a pile of cards from the exhibition of my book Back to the Front in France.  The card had the photo positioned very low down with a huge white area above.  My friend Jack immediately folded it and the image appropriately went to the back, so I used the cards as covers to make 20.  I had enough cards to paint ink onto the glossy surface of others and scratch into it with an etching needle 

to make some of the pages. 

Of course it's about WWI hence the title, and some of the pages are placed upside down or sideways.

Photos of the first few pages below.  

An outing in London

I was contacted by one of the Curators of DIY Cultures 2015, a festival of talks, exhibitions, film and animation with stalls selling zines and artists books to be held at Rich Mix in London on 24th May.  They were interested in obtaining a copy of my book Unchartered Democracy for a concurrent exhibition of artists books called 

DIY Justice.

This exhibition will be held in the Cafe Gallery at Rich Mix Cinema and Arts Centre at Bethnal Green from 24 May to 12 June.  

I am really pleased to be participating but wish I could instantly time travel to London to attend - sounds really great.

Vale Hazel

Hazel Frances Malone

born 1923

passed away on the 2nd May 2015

Lovingly remembered

Anzac Day 2015

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to participate once again this year in the exhibition
 Delires de Livres in Chartres in France.
The theme for the 2015 exhibition was 'How about we go........' and I chose to send a copy of my book Back to the Front, which fitted the theme perfectly -
How about we go back in time to the Western Front.

By chance, this exhibition in France is opening tomorrow on our Anzac Day.  Although probably meaningless for many of the French (though certainly not those wonderful people in Villers-Bretonneux who observe and commemorate our Anzac Day every year after the liberation of their town by the Australians on 25th April 1918), it could not have been more appropriate for me.
The exhibition will continue from 25th April to 17th May.

The exhibition venue is the beautiful old Collegiale Saint Andre in Chartres, not far from the magnificent Chartres Cathedral.

I was interviewed recently for a video about Anzac Day on the occasion of the opening
of the Of War and Peace Exhibition at the Caloundra Regional Gallery,
along with the other three participating book artists Fiona Dempster, Barry Smith and Susan Bowers. 
This video was shot by Ellen Ebsary and she has edited it into a beautiful 3 minute film and posted it  onto the ABC Open website.
You can see it here

Manly Artists Book Award

'Chance' is a collaborative dos-a-dos book made last year by Jack Oudyn and myself. There is a long blog post about it here.  We entered this book in the Manly Library Artists Book Award 2015 and it was selected for inclusion.  

 It will be on exhibition at the Manly Library, Market Place, Manly, Sydney, NSW from 24 March to the 12 April 2015.

The book has been selected for acquisition by the Manly Library for their Artists Book Collection. 

An Al-Mutanabbi Street Event in Brisbane

The 5 March 2015 marks the eighth anniversary of the bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street,

the street of booksellers and book culture in Baghdad since the eighth century.

30 people were killed, 100 wounded and countless numbers of books destroyed or burned.

This year we can also remember the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris and the recent burning and destruction of books in Mosul in Iraq.

Events and readings have been scheduled in different countries to remember this event by the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here members.

This year an event will take place at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, organised by artist Peter Annand who also participated in the artists books and printmaking sections of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here project.

A Soiree, including recitation of Arabic texts, music and readings from the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here anthology will take place at 5 pm on 17th March in the UQ Library Conference Room. 

An installation of boats made from bookmarks and called Passages, relating to the Australian experience of refugees, has been installed today in the foyer area of the University of Queensland Library.  These books have been made by a number of participating artists, and there will be workshops in the Library on Sunday 8 March  and Friday 20 March  from 2 - 5 pm, where anyone interested can make a boat that will be added to the installation.

My boat, made from a combination of my own handmade ink bookmarks and found library bookmarks is contained in a book and opens out to display.

David Symons and Peter Annand did a great job hanging my book in the installation and I decided to call it 'The Magic Carpet'.

4 by 4 at Cairns Regional Gallery

Rimbaud's Drunken Boat

A display of twenty four sculptural artists books are being installed at Cairns Regional Gallery today and will continue until 29th March.  The four Far North Qld artists are Rose Rigley, Claudine Marzik, Rosie Miller and Barbra Dover and the four South East Qld artists are Fiona Dempster, Susan Bowers, Adele Outteridge and myself.  Each artist has contributed three books.

The books will then be displayed in the middle of the year in Brisbane.

My three books include Rimbaud's Drunken Boat, a flexible book made of etched perspex and acrylic which can be adjusted to sit asymmetrically, suggesting the chaotic movement of the sea.  The etchings on each page were made as a response to random lines of the poem Le Bateau Ivre  by Arthur Rimbaud, and were then coloured with acrylic.

The Flowers of Evil

The Flowers of Evil is another book inspired by French poetry - Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire.  In this sculptural interpretation of the poem the pages are of linocuts and expressively written text from the poem appears on the book cover and the book box.

Into the Void

My third book is Into the Void which I've already posted about here.

An Al-Mutanabbi Street Collaboration

The Presence and Absence of the Light

I participated in the Artists Book section of ‘Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here’  Project with a book called ‘Absence’ and when the call came out for the printmaking project called ‘Absence and Presence’ I was delighted to have the opportunity to explore this idea of the destruction 

of culture further.

  

I spoke to an artist friend, Jack Oudyn, with whom I  have collaborated on projects in the past, and who also intensely supports the rights of freedom of speech and democracy.  We felt that if we collaborated on the print we would be making a statement about support and solidarity between artists, particularly our fellow artists under threat in Iraq.  After much thought and discussions about freedom of speech, around the time of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, France, we started work on the print.  Since that time there have also been reports of the destruction and burning of books in Mosul in Iraq.

The print is a combination of two prints, the first is a linocut of an Islamic screen which has openings to let in the light of the world, culture and literature, and others that are blocked by an aggressive arrow pointed shape moving across the screen.

The second digital print of abstract asemic writing underlies the first print.  It also contains the jumbled letters of the words Al Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, but only fragments of the print are visible through the openings in the screen, and these letters do not appear in their entirety in the displayed print.

The composite print has a 3D element in that the openings in part of the screen have shutters (or perhaps book covers) that need to be opened when the print is on display.

Five of the edition of  ten prints of  The Presence and Absence of the Light are on their way to the United Kingdom and the United States for inclusion in the 'Absence and Presence' exhibitions held as part of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Project.