3rd Australian Artists' Books Forum 25 & 26 February 2006 CONFERENCE PROGRAM Saturday 25 February 2006
9.00am – 9.30am registration
9.30am welcome
- Robert Heather, Director, Artspace Mackay
- Professor Diana Davis, President, Print Council of Australia
9.45am – 10.30am Session 1
Keynote speaker
- Marshall Weber, Booklyn USA “Book arts in society” What do Fela Anikulapo Kuti's anti-literacy campaign, advances in cognitive science, physics and and Buddhist cosmology, Elaine Scarry's linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure existentialism and Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, Kerwin the Poem and My New Filing System Is Unstoppable, the desk-top publishing explosion and comic books, underground comix, punk rock, and zines, graphitti and conceptual artist Anton Wurth (and his police station commission!), and the Alexandrina library and Saddam Hussein, all have in common?
Marshall Weber flowingly proposes and answer to this question as he weaves a multi-layered web of cultural strands related to the creative activity of bookmaking in this frenetic global tour of printed and bound cultural and political dissent. 10.30am – 11.00am morning tea
11.00am – 12.30pm Session 2
Conference papers: International practice in book arts
Chair – TBA
- Sarah Bodman, Centre for Fine Print Research, UK
- Narae Kim, Korean Book Arts Fair
- Odine Lang, Brunswick University, Germany
12.30pm – 2.00pm lunch
2.00pm – 2.45pm Session 3
Panel discussion: What’s in a name – is it important to define artists’ books? "Because the field of artists' books suffers from being under-theorised, under -historicised, under-studied and under-discussed, it isn't taken very seriously. In the realms of fine art or literature elaborate mechanisms exist for sorting or filtering work. But the community in which artists' books are made, bought, sold, collected hasn't evolved these structures. Our critical apparatus is about as sophisticated as that which exists for needlework, decoupage and other 'crafts' using materials from Michaels. I'd even go so far as to say that the conceptual foundation for such operations doesn't yet exist, not really. We don't have a canon of artists, we don't have a critical terminology for book arts aesthetics with a historical perspective, and we don't have a good, specific, descriptive vocabulary on which to form our assessment of book works. These three things are needed, even though each has its own problems and will raise hackles and objections."
Critical issues/Exemplary works By Johanna Drucker
The Bonefolder: an e-journal for the bookbinder and the book artist Volume 1, Number 2, Spring 2005
www.philobiblon.com/bonefolder
Influential American book artist and critical writer Johanna Drucker has recently discussed the need to establish a 'canon' on artists' books that would define the artform. Is this really needed? Is it a tool for cataloguing collections or is it an attempt to confine and influence the future directions of the artform? Is this discussion relevant to Australian book arts or are we suffering from a lack of critical discourse? This topic will be discussed by an international panel:
Chair – Robert Heather, Director, Artspace Mackay - Ron McBurnie, Monsoon Publishing, Townsville
- Noreen Grahame, Grahame Galleries, Brisbane - Des Cowley, Rare Books Librarian, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne
- Scott McCarney, artist and Lecturer, Books and Bookbinding, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA
2.45 pm – 3.15pm afternoon tea
3.15pm – 5.00pm Session 4
Meet the artist: artists talks by book artists
- Glen Skien, Mackay
- Angela Cavalieri, Melbourne
- Juli Haas, Melbourne
- Sarah Bodman, UK
- Keith Smith, USA
Saturday 25 February 2006
7.00pm – 10.00pm
Conference dinner
Foodspace café Sunday 26 February 2006
9.30am – 10.15am Session 5
Keynote speaker - “The book in Australian art”
- Andrea Stretton, Contributing Editor, Books for Art and Australia, ABC & SBS TV presenter
10.15am – 10.45am morning tea
10.45am – 11.45pm session 6
Conference papers: Perspectives on the development of Artists' Books in Australia
Chair: Helen Cole - Nola Farman, artist, Sydney
- Steve Tonkin, freelance curator, Melbourne 12.00noon – 1.00pm session 7
Conference papers: Collecting artists books
Chair – Diana Davis
- Des Cowley, Rare Books Librarian, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne
- Malcolm Enright, collector and artist, Brisbane
1.00pm – 2.00pm lunch
2.00pm – 2.45pm session 8
Session 8 2.00pm Sunday 26 February 2006
Panel discussion: Sufferance: a critical discourse
"Your notion of the artists' book will never be the same...
Sufferance: Women's artists' books exhibition invitation 2005
Sufferance: women's artists' books was a project developed by the State Library of Queensland in 2005 to commemorate the Queensland Centenary of Women's Suffrage and the 40th Year of Indigenous Peoples gaining the right to vote in Queensland. Guest curator Jacqueline Armitstead was engaged and eleven artists were commissioned to research the State Library's holdings on women's suffrage in Queensland. The exhibition was held at the CQ Gallery in Brisbane in September 2005 and the commissioned artworks will go into the State Library of Queensland's Australian Library of Art. The exhibition generated intense interest and discussion on the artbooks email list and was reviewed in The Australian newspaper. The panel will discus show relevant the exhibition is to the field of artists' books, the changing role of collecting institutions, the role of the curator and the use of artists books as an artform in examining social issues.
Chair Steve Tonkin, Freelance Curator
Panel members:
- Jacquline Armitstead, Public Art Curator, Cox Rayner Architects, Brisbane
- Helen Cole, James Hardie Librarian, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane
- Courtney Pedersen, freelance curator, Brisbane
- Linda Caroli, arts writer and critic, Brisbane
- Judy Watson, artist 2.45 – 3.15pm Afternoon tea
3.15pm – 5.00pm session 9
Meet the artist: artists talks by book artists
- Scott McCarney, USA
- Odine Lang, Germany
- Narae Kim, South Korea
- Marshall Weber, USA
- Noreen Grahame, Brisbane
- Ron McBurnie, Townsville An Artspace Mackay project supported by Mackay City Council Print Council of Australia An official event celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Print Council of Australia and IMPRINT magazine The Australia Council This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. The Regional Arts Fund The Regional Arts Fund is an Australian Government initiative supporting the arts in regional, remote and very remote/isolated Australia. Southern Cross University Australian National University James Cook University Studio West End Blue Horizons Property Consultants Mackay Queensland Homes ABC Tropical North Tourism Mackay |
