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.