Book Studio

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.

In 1st Semester 2006, the School of Art Painting Workshop hosted Hossein Valamanesh as an Artist in Residence. During his residency he wanted to work with large pieces of unleavened bread and sought a way of flattening his bread under weights. Somehow his search led him to the Book Studio, and our large drying cabinet. Over the next month or so Hossein became an informal but regular visitor to the Studio, trying different ways to dry, flatten and then mount the pieces so that they could be framed without falling apart.

Hossein used the bread as a canvas to paint with pure saffron mixed to an ‘ink’ with water. He painted very elaborate Sufi calligraphy, spelling the word ‘love’ over and over. When I questioned this, he replied ‘Bread and Love — everybody needs it, every day’. Some of the bread pieces worked, others fell apart, which instigated a whole other way of looking at the work, and will lead to ongoing explorations. Towards the end of his stay, we ate a few pieces of the fragments, and the taste of the pure saffron was such a wonderful experience that he used a number of the pieces as an ‘eat your art out’ feature of his farewell party.

Hossein enjoyed the Book Studio so much that he used the letterpress equipment to produce a small edition called ‘In Praise of the Beloved’, which had two almonds in their shells adorned with fake eyelashes attached to the paper with the title printed underneath in handset letterpress. Deceptively simple, and very beautiful, like so much of his work.

(top image: Hossein at work with saffron while John Pratt prints in the background. Bottom image: bread in progress.)

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.

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.