ELSEWHERE

A Flight of Twelve Soutern Hemisphere Birds

I could not resist (nor did I try to resist) sharing with you this series of ten instagram photos from my Thursday out at Redwood Prints. It was such a delight to spend the day at Bernie's side. His lithographic offset proofing press and he are one and the same. He has 72 years of printing experience; a real master craftsman, and ink runs through his veins. He tells me how the ink should sound on the rollers, of the 'hiss' they make.

Little compares to the thrill of seeing your work printed. Such a quiet excitement. Each of the plates came up just as I had hoped. They look soft like the original pencil drawings. Soft and tonal. You can see all the details in the various beaks and wings and eyes.

I am currently getting ready to colour the day's printing. An edition of ten artists' books will be made from this day on the factory floor. With twelve birds in each of the ten books, in the next few months I have 120 birds to hand-colour. I am especially looking forward to colouring the tern with his bright orange beak. Think that is where I'll start.

Thank-you, Bernie, for the day on the press. And to Stella, too, for minding old Percy on your lap and spoiling him. And thank-you G, as well, for capturing the day with device in hand.

A Flight of Southern Hemisphere Birds is really taking shape!

For Chloe

Momentarily visible, collage for The Big Issue, 2011

From time to time, Gracia and I are asked by students if we would mind answering a couple of questions. Recently, visual communication design student, Chloe, asked us the following, and this is our reply.

How did you get to where you are now? Did you undertake any specialist training or take specific courses?
Practice and perseverance, obvious though that sounds. Working at what you love everyday and sticking to working at what you love everyday is the only way. There are no shortcuts, just plenty of risks to take, hard work, and long hours. You need to have a thick skin in order to keep going in the face of rejection, setbacks, perceived time constraints, disinterest, and financial hiccups. And you need to have a thin skin, too, in order to see and feel and then be able to pour said emotion into your work. A balance between this rawness and pluck in the face of adversity is a tricky balance.

We both studied at RMIT (Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts, majoring in Painting, 1994-97), and a short intensive bookbinding course at a specialist school in Ascona, Switzerland (in 2002). Along the way, we have also been able to work with printers, such as Bernie Rackham at Redwood Prints, and this has proven invaluable too.


Time on His Hands, collage for The World of Interiors, 2012

How do you choose clients/briefs? What kind of relationship do you build with your clients?
Most of our design work has been working for other artists designing catalogues for their exhibitions or building websites and/or blogs. These are jobs we pick up largely through word-of-mouth, and we enjoy making the focus of the design the person’s artwork. We also work for RMIT School of Art Gallery and Project Space/Spare Room. In addition to this, we have created artworks for The Big Issue and The World of Interiors. In both cases, these publications have approached us to see if we would be open to and available for a commission. In both cases our response has always been to cartwheel about the room and type back a speedy: YES! Thank-you!

Do you undertake any research about the client of the brief?
Working for other artists they naturally have a clear idea of what they want from a catalogue or what they want their new site to communicate. It is a matter of listening to what they want and translating it directly, to the best of our ability. We fell into this type of design work through working on our own catalogues for various exhibitions over the years.

The same, too, applies to websites and blogs built. We taught ourselves how to do both because there was no other way. Resourcefulness always goes a long way! We built our website in 2002 using Dreamweaver and a series of nested tables. Over the years, we have redesigned it and added to it, ensuring it was a correct archive of that which we’d made. Its current appearance is new as of this year. Built on an online platform, it is home to all our projects from artists’ books and zines to exhibitions and related projects. There would have been no other way for us to have a website had we not built it ourselves. We took a one hour tutorial through Mac Advice to understand what a site was, purchased the then-required software and plunged in from there. The same, too, applies to printed work undertaken in the days when SyQuests were high tech.

In regards to artworks commissioned by The World of Interiors and The Big Issue, our imagery is to illustrate something very specific and so, here, we undertake a fair amount of research in order to hit the spot. Nothing comes without practice. Even if something seems to come from rough instinct, there is usually a fair amount of research and crafting that has taken place behind-the-scenes or in the subconscious.


And the crow fared well, collage for The Big Issue, 2012

How do you go about brainstorming ideas for briefs and where do you get your inspiration from?
Everything can serve as inspiration. Colours seen in film (think: the beauty of the limited palette of an Aki Kaurismäki film with its saturated blues and greens with accents of red and yellow), in nature, on the scarf of the person who passes you on the street. Ideas could come from dance, from music, from a line of text read, from a splinter of a conversation overheard. Ideas can woo from the sidelines whilst you wash the dishes, or in the haze of morning before you are fully awake. Where you get your inspiration from can be anywhere. It can be direct or indirect. Given that where you find it can be so varied, it is what you then do with the idea that interests us. The act of seizing upon an idea and trying to execute it is our interest. Iris Murdoch spoke of every novel being the wreck of a perfect idea, and this is something that governs us as we work.

Is there anyone you look to for help or inspiration, like a mentor? If so, how do they aide you in your design process?
In terms of the ‘design’ of our artists’ books, we follow our hearts, our gut, our mind. It is all very bodily. We listen to our own instincts and the work is the main focus, not whether it will be ‘well received’. What happens to the work afterwards — will it be purchased or collected — this comes after the process of making. If you let those concerns sit on your shoulder at the time of making, the arm would not be able to move freely. The same applies to the written responses for Fjord Review about dance performances seen. If you let the worries of ‘what will I write?’ intrude during the performance you would ‘see’ nothing. You need to try to push those doubts and fears aside as you work. Then, when it comes to polishing the piece, you let them back in.

With catalogue designs for other people, this is not the case and one needs a cool head. With collages such as those for The World of Interiors, one looks for interesting or subtle ways to add in, for example, a ziggurat of clay balls as per the author’s request.


Dear Dad, artwork, design and bookbinding for Australian Poetry, 2010–11

What general constraints do you encounter when working on a brief?
Not being full time designers, design is but one of the pies we have a finger in. Thus far, we approach design as outsiders. We are not interested in current trends, we just try to make the work the focus, be it someone’s beautiful abstract paintings or series of recent delicate works on paper. When we design for others, we just want the person who we are working for to be pleased with the outcome, for the result to be what they were after. When creating for publications, perhaps the hardest part for us is finding a balance between making too literal a translation (of the material we’ve been provided with) and too abstract a response. It needs to both convey the material we are ‘drawing’ and still be ‘us’, our response to the material. A dance in which you have to make up your own choreography.

Other examples of this curious dance include Dear Dad, for Australian Poetry, in which our work needed to convey the theme but not be too obvious.


The arrival, collage for Visible Ink, 2011

What kinds of techniques/processes do you use for the final product?
Everything! Anything! As long as it takes! (But always meet a deadline.)

What are your favourite techniques/processes to use? Where did you find out about them/learn them from?
All. Happy working digitally or with brush, pencil, pair of scissors…

How do you motivate yourself to carry out tasks you don’t particularly enjoy?
In anything you do there is always a part of the process less enjoyable; you just need to alter your approach to it or way of thinking about it. Perhaps what drives us is also a sense that one day it may all disappear. This makes us hungry to seize every moment/chance/opportunity.

How do you evaluate the success of the final design?
In regards to our artwork, we always see things we want to do next time and are thinking about how to make that come about. In regards to design work for other people, if they are happy that is a good feeling, a success. What else would the point be if they were not happy? Seeing our work in print is a beautiful feeling; we feel very fortunate.

For Natalie, and now for Chloe too.
Thanks, G & L

From Swans to Yellow-fronted woodpeckers

From Graeme Murphy's Swan Lake seen last night (so very beautiful!) to a day ahead of printing, the week continues with things feathered and winged. Proofs have been checked and today I look forward to printing the above Yellow-fronted Woodpecker (Melanerpes flavifrons) and other birds as part of a limited edition artists' book that will be a companion piece to A Year of Southern Hemisphere Birds.

A Flight of Twelve Southern Hemisphere Birds will feature the bird portraits from the unique state artists' book, bound concertina style. Printed in single-colour, I will then hand-colour this book in similar vein to As inclination directs and Beneath the screen of closed eyelids (Port-Said) (two artists' books of late that I've made with G).

To those of you who are still dreaming of the ballet, be sure to read G's piece on Vanguard, and to look at this suite of photos from Murphy's Swan Lake. Better still, head along and see the performance for yourself.

The Australian Ballet's Vanguard

G & me at the opening night of Vanguard, Thursday 6th of June.


G & her Mum, Tuesday 11th of June (...and I went with my Mum, too, later in the same week).


The two of us pop in to the State Theatre once more, this time to hear Graeme Murphy & Janet Vernon talk about their Swan Lake choreography (as part of the public programmes lineup), Saturday 22nd June.

Here for you, three small grabs from Gracia's recent written response on The Australian Ballet's triple bill, Vanguard. I adored all three performances, and think it is best that l let Gracia's words describe for me and tell to you how I felt about Vanguard. They sum it up so perfectly for me.

You can read the full piece on our site (and explore other recent performances responded to especially for Fjord Review whilst you are there). And here, too, published on Fjord Review. (Next up, Swan Lake!)

On George Balanchine's The Four Temperaments (1946):
All is on display in pared-back costumes, the simplicity of which allows us to see the whole. How the whole of a leg rotates enabled by the supporting leg and strength of the upper body. How everything is connected in more than a mechanical thigh-bone-is-connected-to-hip-bone sense. Rather, how movement is weighted to the floor even in elevation, as though some giant magnet below stage were held in place. Perhaps even Balanchine himself, wielding said giant magnet, such is his legacy. This simplification of costuming and narrative too, for the four different temperaments or humours—melancholic, sanguinic, phlegmetic, and choleric—serve as an idea from which to leap as opposed to a tale to communicate, show me that this ballet is one closer linked to painting and drawing than I had realised. An artists’ reduction of means on the canvas or parchment enables clarity of vision. Simplify the palette, better see the subject. Limit the means, see clearly the form. This is now what Balanchine has become to me, and I am drawn in, pulled closer.

On Jiří Kylián's Bella Figura (1995):
Bella Figura, for its rawness, directness, and intimacy, is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. A black curtain envelopes a dancer, folding its giant fabric arms about her before letting her loose. Hands hold faces, both own and others. Bodies ripple and convulse as if for one moment not bodily organs within but perhaps a flow of water or jelly spill. There is the loud crack of a thigh being slapped. The distinct and familiar sound of a hand clapping, of feet as they land, of bodies as they fall to the floor. A curtain that trails after two dancers as they move across the stage, becoming a character in itself. There is a dancer who walks alongside another who has transformed into a graceful stalking cheetah (or perhaps a gazelle) before the roles are reversed. The human guide privileged to walk alongside such a creature as opposed to the more familiar scenario of a master walking a hound. A black curtain, that repeating motif, falls but part way, and a row of dancers in enchanting wide-hipped red skirts now hold it in place, hold it from falling; wearing it, taking comfort in it, employing it as shield, becoming it, before stepping forward a trio and the curtain falls silently to stage floor. One arm moves, the other controls it. This liminal place, between dream state and waking. With dancers on the stage warming up before performance even begins—when did it even begin? The intimacy of two red-skirted dancers disrobing for but a moment in the small square of curtain’s frame. The delicate intimacy of a body recoiling then yielding. Two figures moving as one in fluid suspension. As one arcs forward the other follows or mirrors, and this in final duets of the differing pairs that form is something repeated. A leg that swings for briefest of moment is like a pendulum; your time here soon up.

On Wayne McGregor's Dyad 1929 (2009):
Wayne McGregor’s Dyad 1929 takes us somewhere else again, and it is abstraction for own sake; its subject is what you see in the colors (black, white, with yellow in tonal gradation from flesh to sunflower), shapes, and strokes. I first saw the company perform this work in 2009. Now I see something else. My eyes are different. I’ve long thought that it is not the world that gets crueler (or faster), but our eyes that grow older (and slower). For me, the sorrow we see around us speaks of the age of our eyes and this is not linked to actual years lived, of course, but experience, things seen, and felt. Wide-eyed hope, to me, at least, seems hardest to hold onto unknowingly, but then again perhaps the temperament I closest resemble is Melancholic. There is an underlying sadness to this energetic piece that I cannot quite put my finger on. Steve Reich’s Double Sextet offers a new freedom of movement, and for me, with familiarity, I grow fonder and fonder of it, perhaps none more so as in the second movement, which as Nicolette Fraillon, music director and chief conductor, explains ‘provides room for the dancers to develop and express their own individuality, and I love giving them that room. In the context of ballet, this gives a little breathe and space.’

A Year of Southern Hemisphere Birds with its Superb Fruit-Doves and Red Knots and a Kakapo too

At long last I've some images to share with you of my artists' book very nearly completed. A Year of Southern Hemisphere Birds is proving to be something of a mammoth undertaking, but I'm well over half way there now. It is a unique state artists' book of mine that I've occasionally shared process photos of on instagram but have not really had the chance to show you in detail. So I'm especially delighted to be able to share these closer glimpses tonight. Here, you can see the scale of the work, and several of the twelve birds that feature. I'll introduce you to them all, from September's Superb Fruit-Dove (Ptilinopus superbus), and April's Yellow-fronted Woodpecker (Melanerpes flavifrons) to November's bird, framed in ring of kelp, the Antarctic Tern (Sterna vittata), and the Rufous Hornero (Furnarius rufus) from South America.

I am currently drawing the landscapes that each favour and winter is proving the perfect season to sit and draw. I will be launching this artists' book in October.

(Two other winter fans.)

A Year of Southern Hemisphere Birds
to be launched
Leigh Scott Room, Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne
Wednesday, 23rd of October, 2013

More details as they come to hand. Right now I am off to draw the habitat of a Kakapo (Strigops habroptilus).

Seven views

Just in case you didn't catch these glimpses on instagram (and shared on twitter and facebook) yesterday, here is a look at how things are coming together for our forthcoming August exhibition, All breathing in heaven, at Geelong Gallery.


Mapping out space on the Queen's Birthday long weekend.


Working from a floor plan of the Geelong Gallery, a new configuration of postcard collages and my birds is planned in detail.


With tape measure, the space is mapped on the floor. Along this line, my birds will fly in a dense formation.


With another 40 odd columns still to lay out, things are all falling into allotted space.


443 of G's postcard collages (in part) looks something like this.


Adding into the meld, one wombat in Geelong's Botanic Gardens. This collage is Losing feet, losing way.


Homes for twenty-eight new postcard collages found and recorded.

Bringing together collage, drawing and photography

Wet whiskers drying.


Practising the Elephant Shrew Blend in the Johnstone’s Park Fernery, Geelong.


The Philippine flying lemur takes a detour pleasing.


In search of elusive answers.

From one big group exhibition to something smaller, I'm pleased to announce that this August coming and through until mid October Gracia and I are having an exhibition with Stephen Wickham at Geelong Gallery. We are busily working towards getting our work ready to install, and G has made several Geelong based postcard collages to add to the brew (some of which you see above). She will be reinstalling a new configuration of some 400+ postcards along one wall of the gallery. From this neat grid, my birds will fly out to join Stephen's looser grid of photographs. That is the plan. Tomorrow's work will tell us more.

Gracia Haby, Louise Jennison, Stephen Wickham
All breathing in heaven
Saturday 17th of August – Sunday 13th of October, 2013
Geelong region artists program
Geelong Gallery, Little Malop Street, Geelong

Bringing together collage, drawing and photography, this exhibition reveals the artists’ shared interest in the intersection between the animal and human worlds. Combining humour with acute observations of both wild and domestic animals, the works present imaginary worlds, highlight the plight of endangered species, or pay homage to relationships with domesticated animals. The use of early 20th century postcards of Geelong, drawings of the region’s Hooded Plover birds and imagery of the Barwon wetlands adds a distinctly regional focus.

I'm really looking forward to this show. To installing once more all those postcards and all else. More details about this forthcoming show soon.

Martha's on display

A small look at my artists' book, For Martha, exhibited as part of this year's 2013 Libris Awards: Australian Artists' Book Prize, at Artspace Mackay, Queensland. For those nearby, pop along and see the exhibition, do.

2013 Libris Awards: Australian Artists' Book Prize
Until Sunday 30th of June

McAleese Gallery, Artspace Mackay, 61 Gordon Street, Mackay, Queensland

(And should you see my Martha, do take a photo, if photography is allowed in the gallery, as I'd love to see more.)

The Libris Awards are Australia's premier national artist's book prize. An intitiative of the Mackay Regional Council through Artspace Mackay, these biennial awards seek to develop awareness of council's significant collection of artists' books and to develop the collection further through the acquisition of new works by leading Australian artists working in this field.

(All photos courtesy of Artspace Mackay)