Book Studio

Here is a round-up of Book Studio-connected exhibitions:

The touring exhibition of the Studio’s previous incarnation, the Edition + Artist Book Studio, has opened in Melbourne at the State Library of Victoria. ‘How I entered there I cannot truly say’: Collaborative Works from the ANU Edition + Artist Book Studio is running until 17 June 2007 in the SLV’s Keith Murdoch Gallery. The opening day was celebrated with a full day of talks and panels on the various natures of the Artist Book, featuring artists like Peter Lyssiotis, Gracia + Louise, Carolyn Fraser and George Matoulis. Sacha Grishin gave the keynote speech: ‘Both a picture and a thousand words: Contemporary Artist Books’.

There are ongoing activities associated with the exhibition, including a children’s workshop and an advanced printing workshop at the Australian Print Workshop with Dianne Fogwell. You can explore all the options and also listen to a downloadable audio tour for the exhibition at the SLV’s website.

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Dianne Fogwell, the curator of the E+ABS touring exhibition, is travelling to Korea to exhibit at the 2007 Seongnam International Book Arts Fair (S.I.S.F.). According to their blurb, the Seongnam International Book Arts Fair opens to celebrate the first anniversary of the Book Theme Park under the auspices of Seongnam Cultural Center, Saturday April 21, 2007 to Monday April 30, 2007 at the Yeul-dong park in Book Theme Park.
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Patsy Payne, the Head of the Printmedia & Drawing Workshop and current lecturer-in-charge of the Book Studio, is exhibiting in Sydney until 31 March. The show, Mountain Building, is at the Brenda May Gallery, 2 Danks Street, Waterloo, open 11-6, Tues-Sat.

The Book Studio is presenting a workshop in conjunction with the Australian National Gallery’s 6th Australian Print Symposium, titled From Print to Book.

This will be a short workshop exploring various methods of converting prints to book structures. This is a wonderful way to transform proofs and misprints, or to develop a distinct body of work within your print practice. Participants are welcome to bring their own prints, or can work with blank paper (provided) to create maquettes for later reference.

Date: Sunday 1 April 2007, 1.30-4.30pm

Venue: Book Studio, Printmedia & Drawing Workshop, ANU School of Art, Canberra
Cost: $40

Teacher: Caren Florance

To date there are still places available (max. 15 participants) and you can book a place by emailing Caren at eabs[at]anu.edu.au or leaving a message at the Book Studo on 02 6125 5812. Payment can be made on the day by cash, cheque or credit card.

More pages for the Book Studio’s contribution to Bookmagazinebook’s miseducation volume:

A page by Labratt. It’s hard to reproduce; there are layers of print incorporating metallic paper.

A page by Kristin, an exchange design student from Canada.

Margaret, a 3rd year printmaking student, made a book within a book:

Stay tuned for more pages, coming soon…

And to see other Bookmagazinebook contributions, there’s now a flickr group to explore (and join, if you’re playing too).

On the night of the 28th of February the art school was hit by a freak supercell thunderstorm. Four feet of hail clogged the school’s downpipes and consequently torrential rain had nowhere to go but through the inside of the two-storey school. Three weeks later we are still mopping up, and the damage will take months to repair.

The Book Studio was flooded, but damage was confined to a few works on paper and some of the MDF furniture. Both presses seem ok, although we do have to watch for future rust, and miraculously, all the computers and our brand-new inkjet printer escaped harm.

This view is after the pool of water was sucked out; there are typecases drying out and damaged works being investigated. The top of the metal letterpress cabinet (centre-ish) is totally orange with rust.

We are hosting a workshop for the ANG print symposium (details to follow), and hopefully all will be back to relative normality by that time.

Students in the Book Design complimentary unit have taken on the Book Magazine Book challenge of playing with a page of a travelling book and then passing it on. Over the next few weeks we’ll blog the progress of Miseducation as it passes through the class, and when we’re finished we’ll pass it on to someone else for another stage of its journey.

The book started here, and now today’s contribution is by Brad Santos, a 3rd-year Printmedia student:

It’s a combination of drawing, layers of collage and papercuts.

If you want to get involved with the Book Magazine Book project (you don’t need to be an artist), read the guidelines and email johnbonbailey at hotmail dot com.

For your one-stop shop of traditional bookbinding and book repair instructions, go to the Indiana University Libraries website, Repair and Enclosure Treatments Manual. It has a wide variety of techniques, clearly illustrated and explained.

Being an academic sort of blog, the Book Studio blog has had a haitus between the end of the 2006 academic year and now… but the new year starts on February 19, and good things will flow from that point.

In the meantime, if you would like to see a small informal artist’s book that reflects the streets of Brisbane sticker culture, go to this post by Byrd, a Canberra graffiti artist who has documented 12 months up north in his own special way. He’ll be back by May, and Canberra will start to look colourful again…

By the way… this blog has been inundated with spam, and in an attempt to avoid it, comments have been turned off. If you would like to say something in relation to the site, please use the blog email address and contact the studio directly. All feedback is very welcome.

For an overview of some pretty amazing bookbinding work, check out this post at Bibliodyssey.

The Book Complimentary class have been playing with pop-up books over this last semester; here are some paper links for future reference. If you know of others, please share them with us!

• Robert Sabuda’s pop-up cards with instructions and templates
• John Patience’s pop-up book resource page
• Peter Callesen’s paper engineering
• Paperform paper design & engineering
• Chinese paper folds & cuts
• Tarquin books on paper engineering and pop-ups
• A reference page on Chinese papercuts of all kinds

A group of Honours students in the painting workshop have produced their own zine, titled (at last notice) dot dot dot. Consisting purely of drawings photocopied in both colour and black & white, they saved their text for the cover, which was set in metal type and printed using letterpress in the Book Studio.

Erik Krebs-Schade and Tiffany Cole of the Painting Workshop proudly holding a copy of the zine cover, fresh off the press and still wet. Erik set most of the type.

A view of the type form, clamped up (flipped in Photoshop to allow normal reading, as it usually reads back-to-front and upside-down). We printed 2-up onto A3 paper to fold down to A5 size.

The covers, drying en masse in the racks.

The zine artists were: Tim Price, Erik Krebs-Schade, Tiffany Cole, Kalina Pilat, and Della Jackson. The project was co-ordinated by Raquel Ormella of the Painting Workshop with printing help from Caren Florance of the Book Studio.

The zine was produced in an edition of about 270, and was launched at the Zine Fair of the 2006 This Is Not Art festival in Newcastle.