ABE16

Travelled to Sydney last week for the opening of the 16th annual Australian Bookbinders' Exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW. The focus is again contemporary design bindings with readable content and this year's exhibition features the work of 31 Australian and international bookbinders. Two of my works are included in the exhibition. The first is a Franzband rebinding of a copy of Charlotte Smith's Dreaming of Dior (cover detail left) with leather spine and paper covered boards with leather and paper onlays and gold foiling. The second is a French simplified rebinding of a copy of Alfred Wainwright's A Third Lakeland Sketchbook. The exhibition runs until 13 December and more details, including opening hours can be found here.

BookArtObject Exhibition

Slack, slack, slack! There's no other way to describe the paucity of posts. Sure there's been lots of busyness but that's no excuse. I'll try and do a bit of a catch up over the next few days, starting with the BookArtObject exhibition that opened a few weeks ago at UNSW Canberra. Co-curated this one with Ampersand Duck who has written about it here with lots of photos here.
The exhibition's 'poster child' (left) is Making Bread (not bombs), a fabulous flag book by Canadian artist Tara Bryan. The exhibition runs until 28 November.

Doings

It's been a frantic few weeks - so much so that posting to BEMBindery hasn't even been an option. The busyness is book arts related but unfortunately not all that much to do with time at the binding bench working on current projects. The Guild 13 exhibition has happened; there's been a trip to Sydney to deliver some books for an exhibition that opens at the Art Gallery of NSW in early November; a trip to Melbourne to take part in the Australian Bookbinding Symposium; four days at a workshop on making a traditional French chemise and slipcase (above); preparation for a two day workshop next week on the Dos Rapporte spine structure; and bumping-in an exhibition at UNSW Canberra with co-curator Ampersand Duck that opens this Thursday. More about some of these things in coming posts.

Bind Challenge - 4

The Bind Challenge rolls on and the third of my four books has now been completed. It's a response to the query "What were you doing in the year of your 21st birthday and where did you live, work and play?"
The book Letters from Alice draws on memories of time spent as a vacation student in the Australian outback town of Alice Springs. What was intended to be a grand adventure turned out to be a lonely excursion into a racist world where difference was despised and where changing the status quo was never an option.
Like books one and two, it's a drum leaf binding. It will be the smallest of the project's four books, measuring just 65mm x 65mm.

For Martin ...

This week's image of is for Martin, who was taken by a detail of 7POEMS that featured in an earlier post and asked for some more information.
Completed in an edition of five, it's a simple work consisting of a clam shell box that houses eight accordion fold loose leaves (the seven Maxwell Bodenheim poems plus a title-index-colophon).
7POEMS grew from frustration at being unable to secure a 'licence to use' for part of the text of a planned work and a subsequent on-line search for 'poets-who-died-in-1953'. For those unfamiliar with Australian copyright law, the 2004 US-Australia Free Trade Agreement extended the 'copyright-after-death-of-the-creator' period from 50 to 70 years, meaning that new 'out-of-copyright' material will be not become available in Australia until 2024.
7POEMS is currently part of an exhibition at Artisan Books that runs until 12 October.

Guild 13

This week sees the opening of Guild 13 in the Mezzanine Gallery of Canberra's Civic Library. It's an exhibition of recent works by members of the Canberra Craft Bookbinders' Guild and features thirty six works (including three of my own) by nineteen bookbinders and book artists. The exhibition marks my debut as a curator and I've also taken on responsibility for catalogue design and preparation and exhibition graphics. It's been a busy (but satisfying) time and, fortunately, the pace is starting to ease now that the bump-in has happened. For anyone who might be interested a copy of the exhibition catalogue can be viewed or downloaded here.

A Third Lakeland Sketchbook - 2

After a couple of weeks in the doldrums, things have really taken off. A Third Lakeland Sketchbook - a French simplified binding that's headed for an exhibition in Sydney in November - has gone from go-to-whoa in just a couple of days (at right is a detail of the spine and cover boards). Its completion has marked the start of frantic times with two stalled projects wrapped up, a new project started and finished, and the beginnings of another book drying under weights while I work on this post. More on these in coming weeks. All this activity has been overlain with preparations for an exhibition that opens in Canberra in a few days. I'll have three pieces in the exhibition but, more importantly for me, it will mark my 'debut' as a curator. The deadline for entries was a few days ago and last week saw a steady stream of binders and book artists delivering their work. It felt like Christmas!