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

Back to the Front

Well it is back to the front again with the completion of this artists book that I started in 2014.  I made a bookbinding version of this book with text called Si Vis Pacem which has been exhibited twice and I wanted to make a more visual book on the subject as well.

I ended up making four copies of this book, and with the three bookbinding type books, it amounted to a lot of drawing of white crosses.  I almost felt like I'd drawn enough crosses to cover the number of dead on the Western front.

  

Like the first book, the idea behind the book is that of time travel, back to the Western Front in France.  Photos of real battlefields I had taken in France were transformed by digital manipulation into the dark deathly landscapes of the war.  Drawings of crosses as symbols of the dead were added in white charcoal for the viewer to reflect on the price that had to be paid for peace.  Like the first book, I collaged a leather landscape to the cover with white foil tooling of crosses.

Each of the four books has a designated exhibition to go to this year, and the first one has been sent off to Western Australia and will be exhibited in 'Between the Sheets' at the Central Gallery, Central Institute of Technology, 12 Aberdeen Street, Perth WA from the 6th March to 2nd April 2015.
Other books are going to Caloundra Regional Gallery for "Of War and Peace, Anzac Centenary Commemoration Exhibition from 25th March to 10th May, Personal Histories Exhibition at Redland Art Gallery, Cleveland from 29th March to 10th May, and the fourth one will be going to France.

It was great to get work that had been hanging over from 2014 finished and I've made a great start to 2015 with a number of pieces for other exhibitions coming up this year - more soon!