 |
|
|
|
|
Second Australian Artists' Books ForumFriday 25 February 2005The Second Australian Artists' Books Forum was a day long conference exploring the artform of the artist's book through presentations by leading artists, scholars, curators and academics. The Forum was the centrepiece of the FOCUS ON ARTISTS' BOOKS II program of Artspace Mackay throughout February 2005 to celebrate the second birthday of the new regional art gallery and museum. The program includes the Forum, masterclasses and exhibitions as well as the conference whichw as attended by over 130 people from throughout Australia. Welcome by Robert Heather, Director of Artspace Mackay The exhibitions included the travelling exhibition "How I entered there I cannot truly say": Collaborative works from the Editions + Artist Books Studio at the Australian National University that was opened by Professor Sasha Grishin, Head, Art History at the Australian National Univerity, Canberra. Sasha Grishin opening remarks... The Second Australian Artists' Books Forum was an Artspace Mackay project. This project was made possible by a Regional Quick Response Grant - an Australian Government initiative through the Regional Arts Fund, supporting the arts in regional and remote/isolated Australia.Feature articles and reviews: Imprint Magazine The Canberra Times |
SPEAKER: | SYNOPSIS: | Alex Selenitsch
Senior Lecturer
Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Building
University of Melbourne | "Artists who make books"The Gordon Darling Fellowship 2001 was a commission to examine and write about the National Gallery of Australia's collection of Australasian artists books. It involved looking through an incredible variety of over 500 items. The survey provoked a number of thoughts on the definition of artists books, on their development and practices over the past 40 years, on Australasian tendencies, and on the particular problems of displaying such temporally-based and multi-dimensional works. Two writing projects emerged from this study. Firstly, some essays on specific artists with books in the NGA collection exploring how their books form an organic part of their work; secondly, a set of captions attempting to capture the experience of handling and exploring specific artists books. This talk will give some background to the survey techniques used, float some provisional findings, and present some excerpts from the essays and captions. Alex Selenitsch is a M.Arch (RMIT) who teaches design to architecture students at the University of Melbourne; practices as an architect, poet and sculptor. He writes reviews of art, craft and design for various journals and was the Gordon Darling Fellow at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra in 2001. His most recent solo show was Shreds, Cuts 7 Tears, Brushmarks at grahame galleries + editions in Brisbane during 2004. | Stephen Spurrier
artist
Ugg Boot Press
Lecturer
University of Southern Queensland
Toowoomba | In this presentation Stephen will discuss the philosophical and practical issues associated with the making of Artist's Books - what is the most appropriate structure of such books to provide the best outcome in terms of integrity of the work when exhibited? Many artists believe that their books are often exhibited in a curatorial environment more geared to other visual arts media - how do we solve this problem without being too precious? Issues of preciousness also confront the artist when working in collaboration - "Am I reworking or defacing the other artist's imagery/concept?" Stephen will discuss this issue on a number of levels using his own collaborations as examples. Stephen Spurrier has been exhibiting since 1996 and has held 26 solo exhibitions. He began making artists' books in 1996, inspired by the Second Artists' Books and Multiples Fair in Brisbane that year, and established his publishing business UGG BOOT PRESS in Toowoomba during 1998 which he now runs with well known identity Mary Collins. A recent major collaborative Artists' Book project where he worked with thirteen other artists, Little Treasures was recently exhibited at the University of Western England, Bristol, UK (2004). Prior to this the work was exhibited at Grahame Galleries in Brisbane and RMIT Gallery in Melbourne. Stephen's work is in State Galleries and in many other public collections including Parliament House in Canberra, Artbank and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Stephen was awarded the Hutchins Prize in 2000 for the Artist's Book The book of First Aid and how not to use it and received an Australia Council Development Grant of a Studio residency in Barcelona for 2002. He has recently completed a series of editioned Artists' Books The Barcelona Diaries based on this experience one of which is in the collection at Artspace Mackay. | Alisa Bunbury
Curator - Prints & Drawings
National Gallery of Victoria
Melbourne
| Artistic involvement in the production of books has occcurred throughout the history of book-making. Using examples from the National Gallery of Victoria's international collection, this talk will look briefly at two aspects of book production: the development of the printed book in the late 15th - early 16th centuries, in particular the illustrated books of Albrect Durer and his contemporaries, and the rise of interest in the artists' book in France in the first half of the 20th century, inspired in particular by Parisian dealer and publisher Ambrose Vollard. Alisa Bunbury has been Curator in the Prints and Drawings Department of the National Gallery of Victoria since 2002. Prior to this she was Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Alisa was Harold Wright Scholar at the British Museum in 1998; in the same year she completed her M.A. at the University of Melbourne. Her most recent exhibition was From Paris with Love: The Graphic Arts in France 1890s - 1850s (NGV International 2004). | Anne Kirker
Senior Curator (Special Projects)
Queensland Art Gallery
Brisbane | Some see Fluxus as the most radical and experimental art movement of the 1960s. Fluid and open-ended it pioneered what was to become known as 'intermedia', an umbrella term to encompass disparate activities including published multiples: print portfolios, artists' books, boxes with printed event scores. Spearheaded by George Maciunas, Fluxus brought concepts of chance, play and surprise into art and it has had an enduring legacy. When Dick Higgins started his publishing enterprise Something Else Press in New York in 1964, the associated books and pamphlets became an important disseminator of experimental activity for performance, poetry, music and literature. the Press was the first publishing house in the United States to devote itself to what are now called 'artists' books'. This paper will address both Fluxus editions and Something Else Press as complementary components. While the former have been regarded as ephemera (fragile components for weighty ideals), the books have deceptively conventional covers and it is only when they are opened that the joke is on us. Anne Kirker is Senior Curator (Special Projects) at the Queensland Art Gallery, where she held the position of Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs from 1988 until 2001. She has held similar curatorial positions in leading public galleries in Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand. She trained in Fine Arts at the University of Auckland and later gained a Master of Arts (in Art History) at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Aside from an expertise in works on paper, British art of the early twentieth century and contemporary developments in the visual arts are her special fields of interest. In 1993 she curated the exhibition FLUXUS and after... with Roger Butler and Francesco Conz and the Intermedia Avant-garde in 1997 with Nichols Zurbrugg. Since 1993 she has been actively involved curatorially in the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art series of exhibitions and she is currently working on a major contemporary Californian art exhibition for the new Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. | Ross Woodrow
Research Convenor
Postgraduate Co-ordinator
Senior Lecturer, Art Theory
School of Fine Art
University of Newscastle | Digital translation of the First Artists' BookThe Henry Hunter translation of Johan Caspar Lavater's Essays on Physioogomy has long been recognised as one of the greatest examples of the book arts produced in England. One contemporary English reviewer claimed it was "the finest printed book which has ever appeared in this or any other country." No expense was spared in the production of the three volumes from 1789, 1792 and 1798 and many of the eighteenth century's best artists including Henry Fuseli and William Blake were involved in the production of the 534 copper-engraved plates and in-text illustrations. Laveter's Essays on Physiognomy (in its Engliah, German and French editions) is a book like no other in the eighteenth century and from a technical and theoretical perspective it is a demonstration of the power of the graphic arts in the pre-photographic era. Forgetting Lavater's claims for a science of physiognomy, the book presented a picture gallery executed by the leading artists and engravers of the century, as John Graham has noted. It is not an exageration to claim Laveter's editions as artists' books since not only was Lavater a drawing teacher but he and his artist collaborators such as Fuseli envisaged the English edition as a work of art. Immense effort was devoted to the quality of the content and printing in the illustrations as these were the very foundtaion for the analysis in the text. The Henry Hunter translation of Laveter can be viewed today in the British Library and some of the world's other major libraries but it could not be said that such a rare and valuable object is easily accessible. Several years ago I published on the internet a digital translation of the later more popular and condensed translation of Laveter by Thomas Holcroft. This is now catalogued in many of the electronic databases around the world including the Dutch National Library. Recently I have undertaken the digital translation of the massive Henry Hunter edition and in this session I will present the outcome by allowing delegates to compare the digital translation with the original printed version. I will outline the technical and theoretical issues involved in the translation of material images into digital formats, highlighting the accessibility and flexibility offered by new technology. I will particularly delineate the need to recognise the unqiue properties of the digital format as distinct from the printed original. Ross Woodrow was born in Mackay in Queensland. He is the Assistant Dean of Information Technology at the Faculty of Education and Arts at the University of Newcastle, where he has lectured in Art Theory since the 1980s. He has also lectured at the National Gallery of Australia and has written numerous articles for books and journals including Australian Art Monthly, Australian Art Collector and Artlink. He has curated a number of exhibitions including Painting Men: Dobell from a different perspective (School of Fine Art Gallery, University of Newcastle) and is currently working on Twentieth Century Drawng from the Collection for the Newcastle Region Art Gallery. He was a founding member of the International Art History Webmasters Associtaion and has worked on a number of significant web based projects. His Digital Lavater site can be found at www.newcastle.edu.au and his public educational Analysis of Visual Images site can be found at http://www.newcastle.edu.au/ | Linda Caroli
Writer/Researcher
Brisbane | New media practioners have much to contribute to practices and discourses of the book. New media has re-emphasised the book and artists are attempting to redefine, if not books, then the practices for which books have become shorthand such as reading, writing, publishing etc. This paper examines those artists' books and hypertexts which mainfest as critical deconstructions of 'the book'. Many of the earlier new media and hypertext writers pitched their work as a response to the normative textualities and materialities of the book. In particular, those works that N. Katherine Hayles refers to as first generation hypertexts often share a commonly expressed goal of 'undoing' the book, or more specifically, the literary work and the publishing industry. Similarly, artists' books have played a role in 'unbinding' the book as well as distribution outside art establishment walls. In the current epoch, there is an emphasis on 'unbundling content' from traditional containers and distribution methods and Hayles posits media-specific analysis as a means of coming to terms with the plurality of media and technology. Linda Caroli is an award winning new media writer and text-based artist whose work has been exhibited world wide. She is widely published as an arts writer and cultural journalist. With assistance from the Australia Council, she is currently researching and writing about text-based artistic practices across media with a view to publishing an anthology of essays in 2005/2006. | Adele Outteridge
artist
Brisbane | Artists TalkAdele Outteridge, book artist, printmaker and sculptor gained her BSc from the University of Melbourne in 1967 after which she worked as an Experimental Scientist with the CSIRO. She studied with the School of Colour and Design in Sydney between 1984 and 1988, and has attended workshops with Australian and international tutors. She taught at the School of Colour and Design from 1987 to 1989, at the Ku-Ring-Gai Art Centre from 1983 to 1989. She runs a studio in Brisbane (with Wim de Vos) and travels to all states and internationally lecturing and teaching workshops. She has participated in schools' artist-in-residence schemes and has recently completed a four year term as president of the Australian Forum for Textile Arts. Her work in artists' books, printmaking, sculpture and drawing has been exhibited widely, is held in private and public collections and has appeared in books (including Keith Smith's revised Non-Adhesive Binding) and magazines in Australia and overseas. She has experience selecting, organising and hanging exhibitioon in largeand small venues including the Sydney Opera House Gallery. She currently exhibits with Michel Sourgnes Fine Arts Brisbane. | Wim de Vos
artist
Brisbane | Artists Talk Wim de Vos was born in The Hague, the Netherlands in 1947 and migrated to Australia in 1959. Wim's studies have included diplomas in Commercial Illustration and Fine Art at the Queensland College of Art with Honours in Printmaking. He undertook postgraduate professional extension studies in 1981 and 1982 at the Jan van Eycvk Academie, Maastricht, The Netherlands. Wim has exhibited regularly in Queensland, interstate and overseas since 1979. His artistic repertoire includes drawing, printmaking, painting, sculpture and artists' books. His work is held in public and private collections in Australia, the USA, UK and the Netherlands. These include the James Hardie Collection of Rare and Artists' Books at the State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, the Mitchell Library, Sydney, the National Library of Australia in Canberra and Artspace Mackay. He exhibits with Michel Sourgnes Fine Arts in Brisbane and the Port Douglas Gallery of Fine Art. Wim is currently teaching at the Brisbane Institute of Art. He has toured for Flying Arts Inc and has taught for TAFE and MacGregor Schools. He also runs private classes in his studio in West End which he shares with Adele Outteridge. | Dianne Fogwell
Lecturer in Charge
Editions + Artist Book Studio
Australian National University School of Arts
Canberra | Artists TalkDianne Fogwell has been an exhibiting artist and printmaker since 1980. She was the Co-founder and Director of Studio One in Canberra from 1982 until 1986 before founding the Criterion Fine Art Press producing limited editions for artists from 1987 to 1998. In 1996 she became Lecturer in Charge and Program Co-ordinator for the Editions + Artist Book Studio at the Australian National University School of Art. She has exhibited widely and in 2004 has been an invited artist to the 6th International Print Biennale at Roopankar, India and was a keynote speaker and exhibitor at the 1st International Artist Book Fair in Seoul, South Korea. Her work is represented in a number of public and private collections in Australia, the USA and Greece including the National Library of Australia, the James Hardie Collection at the State Library of Queensland, the New Parliament House Collection in Canberra and the Artspace Mackay Collection. | Martin King
artist
Australian Print Workshop
Melbourne | Artists TalkMartin King was born in Melbourne in 1957. He received a Master of Fine Arts from Monash University in 2001 and is currently senior Printmaker at the Australian Print Workshop in Melbourne. Martin has been an exhibiting artist since 1982 and is represented in private and public collections throughout Australia including the Natioanl gallery of australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria, the University of Southern Queensland and the Northern Territory University. Martin has had many years experience in lecturing and tutoring in printmaking. In 2000 he was invited to conduct printmaking workshops in Manila, the Philippines and was part-time lecturer in Printmaking at the Victoria College of the Arst from 1990 to 1994. | Katherine Nix
artist
Canberra | Artists TalkKatherine Nix is a printmaker and papermaker whose work is primarily concerned with teh environment. her main interest lies with the untouched wilderness, the virgin bush and more recently with the interaction between humankind and the environment. In 1979 she commenced working with cast paper and in 1991 studied with Swiss artist Jean-Edouard Augsburger to learn his unusual technique of three dimensional relief printmaking. |
|
|
