WAVERING, 2022
Printed from found textiles – bags that hold citrus fruit, milliner’s mesh – the images that cover the pages of WAVERING record unravelling grids. Their unsteadiness offers a sense of pattern and of space that is reliably irregular. Only two colours have been used to print this book: viridian green and violet. Jarring and raw on their own, together these colours work to create colourful exchanges of energy, pulsations and reverberations. At some points this activity veers toward interference and a flickering static. Solitary words associated with the adjective wavering are printed in juxtaposition to the image-filled pages. The texts extend the signifying possibilities of the unsteady grids, and then perhaps to a subtle inventory of the vacillations of contemporary politics.
Photography: Tim Gresham
Artist book, printed in an edition of 8, relief prints & letterpress, 15 X 21 X 0.4cm.
Printed from found textiles – bags that hold citrus fruit, milliner’s mesh – the images that cover the pages of WAVERING record unravelling grids. Their unsteadiness offers a sense of pattern and of space that is reliably irregular. Only two colours have been used to print this book: viridian green and violet. Jarring and raw on their own, together these colours work to create colourful exchanges of energy, pulsations and reverberations. At some points this activity veers toward interference and a flickering static. Solitary words associated with the adjective wavering are printed in juxtaposition to the image-filled pages. The texts extend the signifying possibilities of the unsteady grids, and then perhaps to a subtle inventory of the vacillations of contemporary politics.
Photography: Tim Gresham
Artist book, printed in an edition of 8, relief prints & letterpress, 15 X 21 X 0.4cm.
Truth Seeker, 2022
Composed from a thesaurus search initiated by the key word rumination, the text notes sentiments experienced during conditions of global pandemic: thoughtfulness, speculation, brooding, obsession, worry, truth seeking, disquiet. Images printed from a single matrix accompany the text. Covering a whole page, the images begin with a single layer of ink in a more-or-less regular pattern. With repetition, and mis-registered and multi-coloured overlays, the images head towards a multi-layered dissonance. In the world beyond this book, these feeling occasionally spill over into other activities: anxiety, rebellion, truth-questioning.
Photography: Tim Gresham
Artist book, printed in an edition of 9, relief prints taken from Rhinestone stickers & letterpress, 12 X 30 X 0.4cm.
Composed from a thesaurus search initiated by the key word rumination, the text notes sentiments experienced during conditions of global pandemic: thoughtfulness, speculation, brooding, obsession, worry, truth seeking, disquiet. Images printed from a single matrix accompany the text. Covering a whole page, the images begin with a single layer of ink in a more-or-less regular pattern. With repetition, and mis-registered and multi-coloured overlays, the images head towards a multi-layered dissonance. In the world beyond this book, these feeling occasionally spill over into other activities: anxiety, rebellion, truth-questioning.
Photography: Tim Gresham
Artist book, printed in an edition of 9, relief prints taken from Rhinestone stickers & letterpress, 12 X 30 X 0.4cm.
Haunts Hantise Haunting, 2021
Drawing on shapes that echo across centuries – the vase or amphora, and in more contemporary times – the decorative patterns found in fabric stores, this artist book employs strategies of repetition and re-surfacing. Images repeat across its pages, as patterns come together to make new versions of themselves in contemporary incarnations of familiar forms. The printed texts read: ‘What is such an obsession? It is something or someone that always comes back, survives everything, reappears at intervals, and expresses a truth concerning an original state of affairs. It is something or someone that one cannot forget, and yet is impossible to recognize clearly.' (Georges Didi-Huberman The Surviving Image, Phantoms of Time and Time of Phantoms, Aby Warburg's History of Art Pennsylvania: The University of Pennsylvania Press 2017 (originally published in French in 2002). p 13.) Haunts Hantise Haunting was made in response to conversations with Angela Brennan (who is represented by Niagara Galleries).
Photography: Tim Gresham
Artist book, printed in an edition of 14, relief prints and letterpress, 27 x 16.8 x 1.2 (fore edge)cm (closed), 27 x 59.5cm (max. open).
Drawing on shapes that echo across centuries – the vase or amphora, and in more contemporary times – the decorative patterns found in fabric stores, this artist book employs strategies of repetition and re-surfacing. Images repeat across its pages, as patterns come together to make new versions of themselves in contemporary incarnations of familiar forms. The printed texts read: ‘What is such an obsession? It is something or someone that always comes back, survives everything, reappears at intervals, and expresses a truth concerning an original state of affairs. It is something or someone that one cannot forget, and yet is impossible to recognize clearly.' (Georges Didi-Huberman The Surviving Image, Phantoms of Time and Time of Phantoms, Aby Warburg's History of Art Pennsylvania: The University of Pennsylvania Press 2017 (originally published in French in 2002). p 13.) Haunts Hantise Haunting was made in response to conversations with Angela Brennan (who is represented by Niagara Galleries).
Photography: Tim Gresham
Artist book, printed in an edition of 14, relief prints and letterpress, 27 x 16.8 x 1.2 (fore edge)cm (closed), 27 x 59.5cm (max. open).
Increments, 2020
Increments tests the parameters of the artist book form in its establishment of the page as a visual field. This work draws on the history of minimalist abstraction (Agnes Martin, as one precedent) and pairs this visual sensibility with a text from contemporary Australian literature: Gerald Murnane’s complex interrogation of the notion of looking. (Murnane, G. 2017. Border Districts. Sydney: Giramondo Publishing. p 117). This book is made with thanks to Leslie Eastman for our discussions about the subtle changes of light observable between sunrise and sunset, sunset and darkness. It is also informed by our joint curiosity about the acuity of observation. It is further informed by my interests in what can be heard if carefully listening, and in a quiet life.
Photography: Tim Gresham
Relief prints made from curtain fabric, and letterpress on Magnani Velata Avorio. Published by the artist in an edition of 5, signed, numbered and dated; 13 x 35.5 x 0.6cm
Increments tests the parameters of the artist book form in its establishment of the page as a visual field. This work draws on the history of minimalist abstraction (Agnes Martin, as one precedent) and pairs this visual sensibility with a text from contemporary Australian literature: Gerald Murnane’s complex interrogation of the notion of looking. (Murnane, G. 2017. Border Districts. Sydney: Giramondo Publishing. p 117). This book is made with thanks to Leslie Eastman for our discussions about the subtle changes of light observable between sunrise and sunset, sunset and darkness. It is also informed by our joint curiosity about the acuity of observation. It is further informed by my interests in what can be heard if carefully listening, and in a quiet life.
Photography: Tim Gresham
Relief prints made from curtain fabric, and letterpress on Magnani Velata Avorio. Published by the artist in an edition of 5, signed, numbered and dated; 13 x 35.5 x 0.6cm
Marian Crawford and Francesca Jurate Sasnaitis GINTARAS / AMBER, 2019 Gintaras is Lithuanian for amber. Writer Sasnaitis's family originates from Lithuania, one of the Baltic states where amber has been gathered, mined, traded and treasured since antiquity. In this collaborative artist book, amber represents the turbulent relationship between earth and air, stasis and movement, father and daughter. Sasnaitis's text weaves between Crawford's images of traditional Baltic textile patterns and pages of brilliantly coloured cellophane that imitate the infinite variegations of amber.
