Book Studio

Ron McBurnie, Townsville printmaker and book artist, has an exhibition opening soon at the Impressions on Paper Gallery in Braddon. Ron is a regular Printmedia visiting artist. The exhibition, called Chasing Palmer: etchings influenced by Samual Palmer, runs from 28 Sept to 22 Oct 2006, with the opening at 5.30 on Friday 29 September.

If you’re interested in more of Ron’s work, he has a website and an infrequent but interesting blog.

In this second half of the year our visiting artist is GW Bot, prominent Australian printmaker who has done some incredible things with the medium of linocut printing.

Bot is coming in one day a week to work on a limited edition artist’s book to be called Black Swan. The book uses three translations of a Russian poem about Australia by Konstantin Dmitrievich Bal’mont (1867-1942): English, Russian and Bot’s own visual ‘language’ (an example of which is pictured below, as linocuts ready for proofing).

The English text will be handset in Times roman (below), and the Russian has been cast on photopolymer plates, to be printed as relief plates on the letterpress press.

We are at the point of proofing the plates and text, and if all goes well, the book will be ready and bound by late November. The edition is expected to be 12 copies.