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.

Into the Void

Into the Void (at the space between day and night) is a new book I've made this year.  The structure is one I've used before as a circular shape, but I wanted this one to sit like a fan.  The front depicts day and shows parts of figures painted in black ink disappearing up into the top of the book coloured an orangey sunset colour and painted in gouache.

The book is wider at the base and double sided, the back being the night and showing the outlines of figures drifting around in the space.

The cover is of faux black and white leather with a paper insert and leather spine.

This is one of my books that will be on display at the Cairns Regional Gallery in 4 x 4, featuring three sculptural books each by four FNQ artists and four SEQ artists organised by Rose Rigley and Fiona Dempster.  They will then be displayed in Brisbane in the middle of the year.

A New Experience

It's never too late to try new things, and this morning was the first time I have ever been into a radio studio and interviewed.  Ross Davies and I were on Steve Austin's Morning show on 612 ABC in Brisbane to talk about the book 'Three Brilliant Careers'. 
An interesting experience! 
You can listen to the interview Here

Family Secrets

Family Secrets, begun in early 2014, has been sitting almost finished on my desk for most of last year and I recently decided to do the small amount of work required to finish it off.  I had originally thought I would make it for Robyn Foster's exhibition Personal Histories, but later changed my mind when I decided to make The One Pound Pom.

I'd made a Victorian Puzzle purse structure for my Christmas card in 2013, and was inspired to use this structure in another way.  I liked the way that even when you opened out the first folds, there was a second closure to be unfolded and it seemed very secretive.

I cut very large sheets of Arches paper and stained them with a mixture of tea and walnut ink to give them a very foxed aged appearance.  I made four puzzle purses and mounted them onto four pieces of heavy card covered with brown Canson paper.

These were then mounted onto a long aged and daggy piece of leather whose three edges I had folded and glued. The four segments then folded inward onto each other 

The fourth edge was the natural edge of the skin and had a pleasing shape which ended up on the front of the folded structure and was tied with a thin strip of pink leather, looking like something I could imagine having in a drawer that did contain letters or family secrets.  This was where I got to when the project was abandoned last year.

 I needed to make some little secrets to go into the puzzle purses, so I decided to make a small folded booklet for each.  I searched the internet for fonts that were attractive visually but difficult to read.  I envisaged something thin and tall.  I found just the thing I was looking for with a font called 'Disclaimer'.  I searched the family history and printed out a couple of facts that the family would have tried to keep secret in days gone by.

The book can be displayed with just one purse opened or can look quite stunning when displayed with them all opened with their booklets - and yes the secrets can be deciphered.