Julian Davies, artist and writer, is the proprietor, and he’s had a couple of exhibitions since opening the gallery. The next exhibition is a group one in which I am a participant. It’s called String Books, and is inspired by printmaker Franki Sparke’s tales of South American (I think specifically Brazilian) books that are small and light and hung on washing-line-like strings.

I love these themed exhibitions, because it makes me think outside my box, so to speak. Like with Call of the Small, or The Hankie Project.

In this case, I’d just finished printing my second Book Art Object piece, in cyan, magenta and yellow, and had a whole pile of offset paper in all three colours. Cyan is such a marvellous sky blue, and the idea of a hanging book made me want to think about why it would be hanging from above.

I don’t know about you, but if something awful or embarrassing happens to me, I don’t want the ground to open and swallow me up — imagine the weight of all that earth. No, I’d rather something or someone plucked me upwards and allowed me to float in the clouds for a while, above all the problems, until they went away.

And that’s why this book was made. It’s called Skyhooks.

The orange line you can see is my makeshift hanging line from when I tested the look of it hanging.

I had enough of the offset paper to make two of these, so it’s an ‘edition’ of two, but they’re quite individual.

Catch them at The Left Hand, for three weekends through December 2010.

I worked out a design for the book’s prospectus (a promotional flyer for the book that includes an example of the book’s paper and printing process) that utilised one of the poems on the page, but after I’d torn down and guillotined and folded them and sent them off to (hopefully) interested parties, I was still left with a large pile of one particular poem: Grieving.

The words to Grieving go:

Friends die, one after another;
Each time a dark disorder
A ceaseless banging of shutters

Upstairs there, in the mind;
Bearing of wings, loud weather
Days, nights together.

To force on the mind order:
Journeys taken on maps,
Attentive delving into

The roots of the language.
A search for the true invention
Of form by line in drawing.

Also, renewal of linen—
Keeping the old customs
Putting sides to middles.

Thus, mind and hand stilled
And with a gentler grief
To draw down the blind

The white holland blind
Like a banner of love
Against that wild confusion.

(© the poet, published in Rosemary Dobson, Poems to Hold or Let Go, Canberra: Ampersand Duck, 2009)

There are so many great ideas in there that translate to paper: language, drawing, form, line, linen (or in this case, rag), folding, ritual, the mindfulness of repetitive movement and simple motions.

I decided to make something out of this forlorn and seductive pile of paper, and once I started working with it, I couldn’t stop. My solo exhibition at Megalo Print Access in September 2009, Pressings: Recycled Bookwork, had four pieces made from this one pile of poem, grouped into two pairs:

This is all four pieces (or both pairs) in situ at Megalo, although the one on the far left (in the foreground, not on the wall on the left, which is a completely different work altogether) is cut off. The first two are plinth works, made of small geometric folded elements that can be reconfigured in various ways depending upon mood, inclination and plinth size.

Grieving 1: Folding the Sheets and Sides to Middles

This is Grieving: Folding the Sheets. All of the pieces shift incrementally in size, and the largest, single centrepiece has an inky black centre made from overlaid black inked fingerprints.

Here’s a closer, vertical view. You can see the text of the poem, again and again, alternating in direction, forming a rhythm.

This is the piece that was hiding in the room view above: Grieving: Sides to Middles. These folded elements of paper are not hand-inked, but run through the press rollers at the end of printing, which gave them a very light, even, almost gauze-like black texture.

Folding sides to middles is an old laundry ritual, where worn sheets would be cut in half and resewing them with the less worn edges now in the centre, where they would get more wear. It is also a very evocative line for me when working with paper, either folding sheets (of paper) for bookbinding or when using origami methods.

Grieving 2: Hold and Let Go

The second pair is quite different, and is site specific, although it could probably be installed again at any other gallery that has white walls

This is Grieving: Hold, and it is a unique piece constructed from a vintage book spine, antique thread (bought still on its Victorian-era factory bobbin) and pieces of the poem. It is mounted on a metal rod that inserts into the wall, and you can view it from both sides.

This is the obverse side. It’s very hard to photograph. Here’s a detail of that page panel, handsewn:

I love the shadow of the text on the other side.

Grieving: Let Go, it’s companion piece, is much freer. It is another work that can change shape at will. This time it was a tree of kites taking off from a book spine, but maybe in the future it can be something else:

Another one that is hard to photograph.

It was very meditative and calming to make these works. A few months later, I made a final Grieving work, and now I think I’ve redeemed that printing mistake, well and truly.

These works are all for sale or available for exhibition. If you are interested, please get in contact.

Julie’s brief was this: This project was borne out of the recent sudden death of my father, a handkerchief, some emotive words written by a sibling on his death and the traumatic aftermath of a death processed according to particular societal and cultural mores. Interested artists and Individuals are invited to create an artwork on a hankerchief (any hankerchief not necessarily a man’s) based around death/grief/bereavement and return it to me by end of May, 2010 for inclusion in a collaborative exhibition in June.

I’d just finished a whole body of work centred upon a poem by Rosemary Dobson that I’d accidentally overprinted during the production of her collection, Poems to Hold or Let Go. I worked with the pages in various ways: overprinting them, using origami on them to form sculptural elements, and I thought that this would be a chance to finish the process, to draw a veil across this particular train of thought. I see this as a broadside rather than anything book-related.

I’ve had an old linen hankie in my ‘collection’ box (or one of them, specifically the textiles one) for years — and isn’t it great when things finally find a purpose? I can’t remember if this one has special family significance or if it was given to me by someone… I wouldn’t have bought it. It’s gorgeous, with real handmade lace around the edges.

The text of the poem was transferred from the original letterpress print to the hankie by eucalyptus transfer (which leaves a wonderful lingering scent of eucalyptus, very Australian) and then I used some antique thread to hand-stitch a weeping thread veil over the text. It really is antique — it comes straight off a Victorian-era factory bobbin and has marvellous slubs and stains through it.

The Hankie Project link above gives a post to each entry in the exhibition, which looked wonderful. I’m sure there are plans to travel the works, so it might turn up somewhere near you. If you’re ever in Alstonville, on the far north coast of NSW (an easy daytrip from Brisbane), visit Julie’s gallery, which specialises in artists’ books and print works.

I was one of the Called, and I designed and printed some very little letterpress broadsides. I didn’t have a lot of time to work on them, as I was preparing to travel to NZ to make some much bigger broadsides. Funnily enough, printing small is just as tricky, maybe even more so, than printing big. So the edition sizes for each poster varies. And there’s one series of images, and then a few fun ones that just begged to be made.

If you’d like to see the process of putting the exhibition together, and all the wonderful studio visits made by Anna-Maria to the craftspeople involved, here’s a link to all of her posts on the subject.

THE SERIES

These letters do not spell anything out deliberately; they were chosen to go with the images, which are little metal ornaments that I bought from eBay years ago. Feel free to make them spell things; Anna-Maria made them spell R&D in the show, others may want the word FORD, or maybe your name is DROF. Heh. The letters are 72pt Gill Sans, printed in a bright sexy red. All have little hand-filed deckles at the head and tail, and are numbered and signed.

Each of these is 45 x 32 mm in dimension, so you’re probably looking at them at a larger scale (which won’t do them any favours).

They’re not really meant to be lined up together, so I didn’t put a lot of effort into making the height of AMPERSAND DUCK match up. I designed each one as an individual, taking into account the balance of each image on the ‘page’.

Edition numbers are:

D: Dragonfly — 20

O: Owl — 20

R: Rat — 20

&: Ampersand — 10

F: Frog: 20

They are all still available.

THE OTHERS

Speaks for itself.

45 x 32mm, in an edition of 9. Still available.

Hammer Time. Hand-coloured.

55 x 32mm. Edition of 6. Still available.

Almost Ace. I just love this one. In amongst a box of miscellaneous letterpress stuff was this tiny little logo with the letters ACF, and I’ve looked at it for years wondering if anything could be done with it or should I just chuck it. One day… BING! I saw the way forward.

Printed on red Japanese washi, 42 x 30mm. Edition of 11. Still available.

All of these broadsides are Aus$15 each plus p&h.

Curated by Narelle Phillips, this is a group exhibition featuring myself,
Geoffrey Dunn (photography)
Nicci Haynes (printmaking)
Philippa Hofgartner (painting)
Andrew Mayo (photography)
Franki Sparke (printmaking)
Peter Stewart (glass)
Anne Warren (works on paper)

I made a selection of paper works using discarded sheet music, letterpress, and various fun things that I found along my trail. What follows are bad phone camera images that are placemarkers until I can get some better ones: I’ve just arranged to have some better ones taken while I’m up in Mackay!

This is called The Midnight Serenade. It’s not really wearable, it’s more a thought about how people treasure a song. Each bead is made from a line of sheet music, and the whole bracelet is the entire song. It is sitting on some bits of pianola roll, with the title of the song, inside an old cigarette case.

Another not-really-wearable piece, called Secret Thrill. Again, something about treasuring music, this time the secret love of a daggy song. It’s a wooden bangle covered with the sheet music of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, with lots of rhinestones that have been stuck on the inside of the bangle.

More on treasuring music. In fact, the whole suite of works are about music, nostalgia and holding something close to yourself. This one, using sheet music and origami, is called Humming. It sold on opening night.

A close-up of Humming.

This one is a collage work on paper. I was playing with an old hymn book that had lovely thin, fragile paper. I was making origami shapes from the paper, but it wasn’t feeling like anything special. Then I found myself becoming entranced with the yellowy amber-like quality of the copious amounts of decaying sticky-tape that had been used by a previous owner to hold the book and pages together. There was no page left under the tape, only this luminous transparent gold. So I made a piece using the tape. It’s a conservator’s nightmare, but it’s a beautiful golden piece. I called it Stain.
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A close-up of Stain.

This is the end of a pianola roll, collaged with text. I called it Blue. The holes in the roll when looked at from the side looked like electronic pulses, and as I pondered over them I found myself humming ‘Blue Monday’ by New Order. When I thought about the words, they seemed very straightforward and simple. I looked through my cut-up collection of books for the right paper colour (it had to be a very particular aged brown) and found it in an old cheesy edition of Little Women. I found all the words I needed in just two chapters of LW.

A close-up of Blue, with text.

I made a stack of posters to advertise the show, using wood type on newsprint and sheet music. Finally, I printed on the backs of the two books of sheet music I’d taken apart for the posters. I thought I’d make them a bit special for the show, so i collaged them. This one is called Vocal Chords

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A close-up of Vocal Chords.

And this one is called Reflex.

A close-up of Reflex. The song lyrics on the right are the ‘rap’ from Michael Jackson’s Thriller. I can’t believe they made Vincent Price say y’awl’s neighbourhood!

All the works are for sale through the ANCA Gallery until the show finishes.

Opening on 23 March 2010, Paper Works at Brenda May Gallery will feature the following artists: Melinda Le Guay, Lezlie Tilley, Nicola Moss, Helen Mueller, Nicola Dickson, Patsy Payne, Janet Parker-Smith, Debbie Hill, Helena Leslie, Tammie Castles, Caren Florance, James Blackwell, Nicci Haynes, Wendy Edwards, Susan Buret, Janis Nedela, Thurle Wright, Melinda Capp.

I am showing two of the pieces from my Pressings exhibition: Grief (Sides to Middles) and Night Ladders (Escape).

The show runs from 23 March to 11 April 2010. The opening itself is on 27 March, from 4-6pm. Please go if you can.

]]> http://ampersandduck.com/art/2010/03/18/paper-works-at-brenda-may/feed/ 0 http://ampersandduck.com/art/2010/03/16/country-show-2/ http://ampersandduck.com/art/2010/03/16/country-show-2/#comments Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:55:37 +0000 duckie http://ampersandduck.com/art/?p=130 Country Press 2 was an exhibition at the ANU School of Art in October 2009. There was one of these the year before, hence it was number two.

I offered to make a promotional poster that could double as my work in the show.

'wood chop' is on the left, 'fairy floss' on the right

This was the first thing I printed in my new studio, on my new press, and I used the poster to test out what Kitty the Vandercook could do… so each poster took multiple passes of the press. The metal type (the names) took two passes for each colour scheme, and the wood type (the top half of the poster) took four passes of the press each, one for the background colour run (hard to see in the reproduction!), two for the main colours, and one for the — hand-applied — rainbow roll on the number. The stars were then hand cut and stamped.

The poster itself is quite large; we scanned one to make an A5 invite for the show.

One of the (many) lessons learned with these posters is that soy-based ink doesn’t like drying on coated paper stock. I can’t buy oil-based ink locally anymore, so the learning curve was a double one working with the press, and working with the ink. Still, I think they worked out ok. There are 10 of each colour.

These are still available, and priced at Aus$50 each plus postage and handling.

Contact me for more details or to purchase. I will send you an invoice that can be paid by Paypal, EFT or cheque.

(I also made some quick splash posters to hang around the campus. They were souvenired pretty quickly!)

Every few years the Technical Officers put on an exhibition to showcase the fact that they, too, are professional artists maintaining their own practice. In 2009 the show was called Art-i-Techs, and it opened on Wednesday 25 March at 6pm in the Foyer Gallery of the School of Art, Liversidge Crescent, Australian National University.

The show ran from 25 March to 4 April 2009.  I showed Transmigration (along with its prospectus), Pr0n Coktales and a couple of informal bindings.

A wide view of both my plinths

Transmigration + the prospectus for the book

on the left, pr0n coktales, and on the right, a few fun books I made to demonstrate techniques to students

I gave an account of the exhibition opening at my personal blog.

Exhibition statement:

I have a burning desire not to waste materials, and my personal artist’s books are made from paper or other materials left over from more formal projects. Many of my unique books are made from the print proofs, ghosts or off-cuts of commissioned letterpress work. I make them as a souvenir of a collaboration, or as an extension of themes that run through the text I’ve been working upon.

I am an avid reader and chronic daydreamer; I often spend so much time with the words and images of a single book project that it is refreshing to rework them in a different, more playful context, which allows me to extend my appreciation of the original text beyond the realms of the traditional page layout.

I also like to trawl second-hand book sales and rescue under-appreciated books to rework them into something people might value again. I might use the title and/or cover of vintage novels to begin new stories that the viewer can continue in their own imagination. In any case, my working methods seem perfectly in tune with a world that is once again recognising the need to re-use and recycle as a cultural process.

Selected works from the show:

Grieving: Let Go, 2009. installation of folded original letterpress pages
(from Poems to Hold or Let Go) and a vintage book spine.

Nightladders: After, 2009. Vintage book cover,
concertina papercut from offset-ink press proof pages.

Nightladders: Escape (detail), 2009. Vintage book cover,
papercut from offset-ink press proof pages.

Nightladders: Escape (detail), 2009. Vintage book cover,
papercut from offset-ink press proof pages.

Me, Like a River, 2009. Concertina flag book of
letterpress offcuts from the book Shared Rooms.

Never Kill a Dolphin, 2009, from the series ‘Jetsom’. Clamshell box from vintage book cover,
lined with the book’s illustrations. [sold: private collection]

Exhibition statement:

I have a burning desire not to waste materials, and my personal artist’s books are made from paper or other materials left over from more formal projects. Many of my unique books are made from the print proofs, ghosts or off-cuts of commissioned letterpress work. I make them as a souvenir of a collaboration, or as an extension of themes that run through the text I’ve been working upon.

I am an avid reader and chronic daydreamer; I often spend so much time with the words and images of a single book project that it is refreshing to rework them in a different, more playful context, which allows me to extend my appreciation of the original text beyond the realms of the traditional page layout.

I also like to trawl second-hand book sales and rescue under-appreciated books to rework them into something people might value again. I might use the title and/or cover of vintage novels to begin new stories that the viewer can continue in their own imagination. In any case, my working methods seem perfectly in tune with a world that is once again recognising the need to re-use and recycle as a cultural process.

The following are in-progress shots. Go here for in situ photographs.