Book Studio

The Book Studio is pleased to announce the completion of the edition of visiting artist GW Bot’s artist book, Black Swan.

Black Swan features a Russian poem about Australia, written in 1912 by Konstantin Dmitrievich Bal’mont (1867-1942). The Russian text was translated into English by Sasha Grishin, and both versions were set in Times on a Mac computer, cast in photopolymer plate and printed using a letterpress process by Caren Florance.

With linocut illustrations cut and printed by Bot herself, there were 19 books produced, although it is not known at present how many will be in the final edition.

The paper used is a Magnani partially formed from wool fibres. The binding, by Caren Florance, is a traditional sewn hard case binding using Tapa cloth laminated onto black Chelsea bookcloth (there is a detail of the cover at the foreground of the image below).

The British Library and the National Library of Australia have both bought copies, and there is an article featuring Black Swan in the Winter 2007 edition (vol 42, no. 4, p. 18) of Imprint, the Quarterly Journal of the Print Council of Australia. The copy of Black Swan in this article is a hand-written version, sent to be part of Noreen Grahame’s group exhibition Lessons in History Vol. 1 (24/3/07–28/4/07, in Brisbane). The printed copy of the book was meant to be finished in time for the exhibition, but due to various setbacks, it could not be competed at that point.

For further details on the book, please contact the Book Studio. Any purchasing enquiries will be directed by the Studio to the artist.

This entry was posted on July 3, 2007 at 8:25 pm and is filed under Art Feature, Links, Visiting Artists.