Visiting the State Library of Victoria

I'm spending a couple of weeks in Melbourne staying with family and yesterday I visited the State Library of Victoria.

Despite living here for two years, I had only visited the SLV once before. Quite odd really, given the ceramics department of RMIT is directly across the road and I am a book artist.

I had never been to the LaTrobe Reading Room, which you can see below is quite beautiful. It's topped with a glass dome and so is wonderfully light. I wandered around quite enchanted and spent more time there than I really had.

I actually went to the reading room to see the map-based book sculptures by Nicholas Jones, who I confess I did not previously know. These proved impossible to photograph without the glass dome reflecting in the glass cases, but did make for some pretty photographs.

Next I went to see the Mirror of the World, the exhibition drawn from SLV's collection of rare and significant books - and it was wonderful. I ran out of time, and am really happy that the exhibition is a permanent feature as it is well worth another visit. 




It presents a history of books, starting with the oldest book in the library's collection from around 400AD.


Below are some photos of books that particularly appealed to me from the first half of the exhibition as sadly I had to rush through the second half of the exhibition. The photos aren't great as I only had my iPhone and of course, the lighting was kept very low. Apart from the last photo, all the books are religious ones, as of course were the earliest books. The second half of the exhibition moved on to books of litery significance and modern artists' books.

The works of Augustine from ~400, showing the oak boards through the vellum

and metal clasps (and the shadow of my iPhone!)

An illustrated Buddhist text in (I think) Sanskrit.

 A scrolled edition of the Torah, with silver reading pointer.

                   

The Koran (my favourite in the exhibition)

Japanese concertina and stab-bound books

Book Art and Zine Exhibition, Melbourne

A very short post to let you know that while it may seem I've been ignoring you, I have been thinking of you all. I've been beavering away, preparing work and submissions for shows, this year and next.

First up is BAZE at Hand Held Gallery in Paramount Arcade, Bourke St, Melbourne. The opening is this Thursday - so if you are in Melbourne, I hope you can make it along.



As well as a copy of the Special Edition of Judy and the Jacaranda hand bound by Monica Oppen, I'm sending copies of my first zine, Looking for Wabi Sabi in Tokyo. I've also made two new wabi sabi zines based on photos I took in Paris. A few sneak peaks follow.

Tokyo

Paris

Paris2

The rest of my time is spent wrestling with my Book*Art*Object contribution, A Day Just Like Any Other , due to be posted off before New Year! Yikes! My main difficulty: too many ideas and not enough time to sit with them so that the best can percolate to the top.

Hello from Melbourne!

 

Window at Heide Art Museum (detail)

I’ve been in Melbourne a week already and it’s great to be here.

We are spending two weeks here, the first entirely holiday, and during the second I’ll be trying to attend as much of the 4 day Impact International Printmakers Conference as I can. Although I can’t make any claim to being a printmaker, there are two streams which I hope to attend:- the one about artists books and the other on digital printmaking.

The entire collection of Book*Art*Object books from both editions so far is to be displayed on Monash campus, where the conference is being held, which will give the group and the work high visibility. As well, there are a huge number of artists book and print-related exhibitions on in Melbourne this month, all timed to coincide with the conference.

The conference starts tomorrow (Tuesday) and the hard-working Ronnie has already installed our work in its display cases at Monash campus. Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to rest up today in the hope of getting along to all the stuff I’ve circled in my conference programme!

If you’re interested in following some of the conference action online, head over to the Book*Art*Object blog. Together with Ronnie, Sara and Caren, I will be blogging from the conference, hopefully even “live” at times, as we have all armed ourselves with the appropriate apps for blogging from our mobile (cell) phones.

SEE YOU THERE!

Hannah Bertram in Melbourne

If you’re in Melbourne before October 16th, be sure to get along and see Hannah’s latest works at Dianne Tanzer Gallery. The show is the culmination of her project for 2010, The Silence of Becoming and Disappearing. 

 

Work by Hannah Bertram

If you can’t make it to the gallery, you can see the photos of the sublime works Hannah made in private homes throughout the year on her website.

Wraith Detail Shots

More images in coming days.

Wraith Day 2

Exhibitions in Melbourne

While I was in Melbourne I managed to get to a few exhibitions. I was surprised and pleased to see the number of people I studied with who had shows while I was visiting - there is so much going on in Melbourne in the way of art. I made it to two shows by dear friends and I wanted to show you images of their work, but as I didn't take any photos in the gallery, I'll have to rely on their invite images. The posting order of images relates only to the order in which I saw the shows...


First I went to the State Library of Victoria to see the ANU Edition + Artist Book Studio exhibition titled "How I entered there I cannot truly say". This gorgeous triangle book on the left was my pick - triangle books are my favourite and with that succulent red section, well who could resist this beautiful piece.
There were some wonderful etchings but I was hugely disappointed that the books were displayed in cabinets. Where were the white gloves? A book is made to be held in your hands and the pages turned...and I told them so in my feedback sheet.



This invite is for an exhibition of beautiful works by Hannah Bertram, a talented artist who I met at RMIT. Hannah's work concerns the decorative, is often ephemeral, and frequently surprises. This installation consisted of a trail of everyday paper ephemera beautifully pierced with intricate patterns. The works extended along the wall, filling the entire length of the gallery like a chain of buddhist prayer flags. The contrast between the labour-intensive decoration and the incredibly mundane substrate is at times quite amusing.



In the same gallery as Hannah's work (Dianne Tanzer Gallery) I stumbled on a wonderful group show with quite a few Australian "name" artists including two of my favourites, Kris Coad (her work left) and Sebastian di Mauro (below). I know I saw this show advertised somewhere but I can't find any images of it online to show you so I have used some older works by these artists which are particular favourites of mine. Kris Coad works with the translucency of porcelain to create works with almost-hidden symbols that rely on light to be exposed.

Sebastian di Mauro is a wonderful artist from my home state, Queensland and this image shows the first work of his I ever saw. It was called Floccus and as you can see he created these wonderfully ambiguous huge sculptures of some soft material that looks like fluff from a clothes dryer or something. The forms really took on the feeling of being creatures that you just wanted to hug or stroke, but by the same token, in the semi-dark space, you couldn't be sure they might not turn on you suddenly! It is one of my all time favourite installations. The work in Melbourne continued to explore similar forms but in bronze and less than 30 cms in length.

The last show I saw was by another talented artist from the MFA program, Katie Roberts. Katie's work has focussed on the Yarra River, which twists and turns its way through Melbourne. She has used video previously and in this exhibition presents her second series of mixed media drawings which functions as documentation of the social and natural history of the river. With moody depictions of the city in the background, Katie has manipulated her materials to create what looks like a record of the very soil on the river banks. Indigenous imprints are overlaid by the European ways of thinking about and interacting with the river, creating a visually "sedimentary" historical record.