One NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair, a SLV panel discussion on book design, completion of an order of tiny cyclists and footballers, Sydney Dance Company's heartfelt call to arms, and a Snow Leopard later — where did the bulk of May go?
(A cardboard city beneath Leonard French's stained glass ceiling. (#NGVABF, Great Hall, @ngvmelbourne))
(In flight (at #NGVABF). (Image courtesy of @ngvmelbourne's Facebook feed.))
(Early May's Melbourne Art Book Fair passed in the blink of an eye, with little chance to take photos, save for the moments just as the doors opened.)
(Several new zine titles and small prints, created especially for the fair, will soon be added to our site and online store.)
(Final stall tweaks before things kicked off.)
(Hither & Thither, one of eleven new zines made especially for the NGV Art Book Fair.)
(In the borrowed costume for a Young Man from The Rite of Spring, after Nicholas Roerich, 1913, with a Great horned owl (Bubo virginianus), one of G's collage on a carte de visite.)
(Contemporary book design: panel discussion, chaired by Oslo Davis, at the State Library of Victoria and presented as part of Melbourne International Design Week, with Radovan Jenko, Flavia Cocchi, Stuart Geddes, and us two. (Image from @designmattersvictoria's Twitter feed.))
(Tiny supervisor hard at work. (Painting small pewter cyclists for Antique Toy World, Camberwell.))
(With a 000 brush in hand, the afternoon requires focus! (#theworkingtable))
(Here comes the Snow leopard.)
(Whisker Controller. Olive oversees the fur and whisker details on the Snow leopard's progress. (#tinyoverseer))
(Snow leopard (progress) on Matisses's Polynesia, the Sea (1946).)
From the two of us, a huge thank-you to every single one of you who came by our stall and said hi, and big love and thanks to Megan Patty and all the staff at the NGV. We'd love the chance to do it all again.
Two links to peruse:
Gracia takes you to Sydney Dance Company's performances of William Forsythe's Quintett and Rafael Bonachela's Frame of Mind, especially for Fjord Review. You are in for a treat!
'To feel' is where it all begins. It is the thread that binds Choreographer and Artistic Director Rafael Bonachela’s premiere work Frame of Mind to William Forsythe’s Quintett, a so-honest-it-hurts love letter to his dying wife.
Presented side by side, both works, uniquely tender in their fragility, give a physical framework to heartache. Born from the tight knot of personal experience, both works spiral outward and give expression to longing and vulnerability. To be entrusted with something deeply personal yet universal, raw yet understated, is a rare gift.
Opening with Forsythe’s Quintett, which premiered in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1993, it is shown through action and heard through repeated stanza, that a state of longing and a kernel of hope can appear temporarily fixed. And so for 26 beautiful minutes, I found myself suspended within a constant sensory loop as an elderly man sang a simple refrain: Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet.
...continue reading
And the State Library of Victoria's La Trobe Journal: Creating and collecting artists’ books in Australia (No 95 March 2015), for which we created the cover collage, is now available as a pdf download online.
This special issue of the La Trobe Journal focuses on the development of artists’ books as an art practice in Australia. The digital revolution has led many to question the future of the book, yet more artists are involved with making books than ever before. Artists, printmakers, letterpress printers and binders are creating and designing books that draw upon and extend the traditional format.
