Book Studio

Dr Danie Mellor, former staff member of the Edition + Artist Book Studio, has an exhibition opening at the Canberra Museum and Gallery from 6 August to 22 October: Voyages of Recovery or An Ongoing Catalogue with Moments of Reason from the Cabinet.

The opening is on Friday 4 August at 6pm 5.30pm. (apologies for not reading the card properly!)
Image: True Blue and White, 2005, mixed media.

For anyone interested in paper construction and pop-up books, check out this wonderful Australian site called Paperform (bandwidth warning: it is very slow to load, even with a fast server. But the wait is worth it!). For more on Paperform’s creator, Benja Harney, see this article. Maybe click this link first to see if you want to wait for the other site!

And while I’m on this topic, Peter Callesen (below) is another fantastic paper artist, based in  Denmark. His website is exquisite.

Bookbinding Exhibition Australia (BEA) is planning its next exhibition, Under the Cover, to be held at the Stanton Library in North Sydney from November 2006 to the end of January 2007.

They invite bookbinders and others who make books to take a broad view of the title and create a binding that represents what they see under the cover — be it under the quilt cover, the book cover, or even the cover of darkness. Inspiration might be found in quilting material and methods, or this aspect can be disregarded all together. However participants choose to interpret Under the Cover, BEA anticipate this will be an exciting exhibition of diverse bookbinding methods and styles. They hope to attract a broad group of participants for this exhibition.

The Stanton Library is organising an exhibition of heritage Australian quilts, from Annette Gero’s collection, to be held at the same time as Under the Cover. Even though the exhibitions will be in separate spaces, there are similarities and differences between the two and they have chosen the exhibition title with that in mind.

More information is available on the BEA website http://bookbindingexhibitions.com.au

Bernie Slater is a graduate from the ANU School of Art Printmedia & Drawing Workshop, and is one of the current Alumni-in-Residence in the Book Studio.

His latest work, We know who we are (pictured) is a massive 4-section banner silkscreen on paper. It’s showing as part of a group show called Octopus 6: We know who we are in Melbourne at Gertrude Contemporary Art Space in Melbourne until 18 August 2006. The show then moves to the Gippsland Art Gallery in Sale, Victoria from 26 August to 17 September 2006.

This print has also been selected for the new Social Commentary Prize based at Warrnambool. I’ll post more details on that when I get them.

For anyone into Mail Art projects here’s a fun print one:

Field Study presents: WIPE - Light-weight bookwork

Produce a print edition of 40 on toilet paper (any type). It’s an open theme, any print technique allowed, including rubber stamps and typewriting. (No organic materials or traces allowed!) Max size: 14 x 11 cm. The sheets are stapled at one side, at the left, so take this into account when you work out your page design.
This is an ongoing project, with no deadline. The co-ordinator waits until 20 participants have sent editions in, then compiles 40 booklets and sends each artist a copy. The other copies are sold to institutions and artist-book collectors, and some are given away as gifts.

Field Study is a non-profit organization and all monies raised are ploughed back into the Field for future projects.

Address: Field Study, P.O. Box 1838, Geelong VIC 3220 Australia.

[I have sent a few editions off to this project. Its been going for ages, by the looks of it, and has a lot of international participants. The first time I sent one off, the booklet was #35 in the series, and that was a couple of years ago! You can print, sew, paste, and type. It gets pretty addictive, and it totally changes the way you look at toilet paper when you walk through the supermarket...]

For anyone interested in artist’s books, whether making them or administering them, I highly recommend The Bonefolder, an e-journal for the bookbinder and publisher, published by Peter Verheyen and a wonderful team of editors and reviewers. There’s always a great mix of practical instructions, reviews and debate about how books should be classified and viewed. To this date there are four issues; vol 1.2 has a practical overview of the tunnel-book structure and vol 2.1 does the same with flag books, both of which are interesting ways to play with single-page prints in a book form.
Note to ANU School of Art Students: the journal is readily accessible online, but if you want copies of any of the articles, the Book Studio keeps a hard copy printout of the journal in the BS office.

Just as Dante ‘wandered off from the straight path’ to explore more exotic realms, the Edition + Artist Book Studio produced books and prints that resulted from a similarly enigmatic route through artistic collaboration. Now, after eight years of solid production, the results are travelling through regional Australia with the help of a touring exhibition grant from the Federal Government’s Visions of Australia program.

A view of the exhibition as installed in Artspace Mackay
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Watch this space for news and images from this small corner of a Canberra art school. Thanks for dropping by.