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For many years Queensland had a diversity of artists book activities: the bi-ennial Artspace Mackay Artists Book Forums and Libris Awards, the once yearly Noosa Artists Book Events and the Southern Cross University Acquisitive Artists Book Awards. Also contributing to this fertile artists book environment the State Library of Queensland’s Australian Library of Art which included the SLQ’s Siganto Foundation fellowships, ‘white glove’ presentations and events.  Added to this were exhibitions and artists book fairs coordinated by Grahame Galleries and other shows at scattered venues. With the recent demise of the Mackay, Noosa and Southern Cross events their absence was felt by the artists book community.  Now a new event has emerged to add to the SLQ and Grahame Galleries support of the art – the Artists Book Brisbane Event (ABBE). Over July 16, 17 and 18 ABBE featured a triptych of activities; a conference, an exhibition of books, an artists book fair and allied exhibition events at the State Library of Queensland, Grahame Galleries, The Studio West End, the IMA and Impress Printmakers Gallery.

The conference sought to address 3 main themes relating to the artists book:

• post literacy
• materiality/the haptic
• the nature of reading artists books.

Three keynote presenters lead the program:

• Sarah Bodman – Senior Research Fellow for Artists Books, CFPR editor of the Blue Notebook
• Brad Freeman – Founder and editor in chief of the Journal of Artist’s Books
• Dr Lyn Ashby – Australian artist and scholar making books

Sarah Bodman presents her keynote lecture

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SARAH BODMAN (Abstract)– ARTISTS’ BOOKS AS A PHYSICAL SITE OF PRACTICE

If a post-Literate society might also encompass new ways of thinking about reading, we could think of contemporary artists’ books as a site of practice beyond that of McLuhan’s sign posting of the invention of moveable type as fundamentally responsible for how the Western world physically reads: “along the straight Lines of the printed page.”

We seem to have already moved from Linear to non-linear reading; we are used to flitting through digital screen-based texts, and losing our attention through a multitude of online multi-tasking. Physical engagement with artists’ books provides us with spaceto breathe, a slower rhythm of ingesting information and time to reflect, so what about the artists who are making them? How are artists engaging with the physical book now?

These examples focus on celebrating the book as a physical container used by artists to: re-present language, offer performative reading, view how reading is perceived, appropriate text from novels and instructional manuals into new works, or to transform information from the virtual into the physical.

Brad Freeman presents his keynote lecture

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BRAD FREEMAN (Abstract) – JOURNAL OF ARTISTS’ BOOKS

Brad Freeman’s Lecture focussed on JAB, the Journal of Artists’ Books, that supports critical inquiry into artists’ books. Since 1994 JAB has published interviews with contemporary artists whose primary medium is the artist book, reviews of artists’ books, and essays about historical issues and contemporary artists and their work. JAB has a two pronged approach to culture creation via publication arts; an educational approach with critical writing and documentation of current activity; and second, a creative approach with publication art-exploring the creative potential of print and the book by commissioning artists’ covers (letterpress and offset), artist designed pages, and artists’ books made especially for insertion into JAB.

Lyn Ashby presents his keynote lecture

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LYN ASHBY (Abstract) – POSTLITERACY AND ARTISTSBOOKS: Coming to our senses with a modern mythic form

This presentation is a speculation on the idea that contemporary artistsbooks may be the laboratory for a new literacy, and that in honor of the quietly evolutionary nature of this new literacy, we might call it “postliteracy”.

As background, it explores how our centuries of standard literacy and its attendant conventions of pictorial space and chronological, narrative time, have privileged a specific code in the representations of our language systems (both image and text) and their operations across the page and through the book. The prescriptions of these conventions and the domination of the line and the grid onto the look of language have come to minimise the participation (and uncertainty) of the senses in the direct process of apprehending meaning with language forms.

But the pages of artistsbooks are often filled with the explorations of other ways that language forms can activate a lively, sensory involvement with the page space, or how meaning can be formulated beyond the limitations of chronology.

Some of these experiments involve the invocation of pre literate, oral language structures that work more by the devices and grammars of music, song and myth than the usual strategies of standard literacy. in this way, the contemporary artistsbook may be the hardcopy home of a modern, mythic form.

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Doug Spowart performs his lecture ‘I’m about to ‘read’ a book’

Victoria Cooper presents her lecture ‘The Grafted Image: The Montage’

Tim Mosely presents in the lecture room

Presenting/Participating at the conference

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• Lyn Ashby
• Sarah Bodman
• Sara Bowen
• Deidre Brollo
• Helen Cole
• Victoria Cooper
• Marian Crawford
• Daniel Della-Bosca
• Fiona Dempster
• Caren Florance
• Jenny Fraser
• Brad Freeman
• Angela Gardner
• Noreen Grahame
• Bridget Hillebrand
• Joel Lardner
• Marian Macken
• Tim Mosely
• Adele Outteridge
• Mikhail Pogarsky
• Doug Spowart
• Kym Tabulo
• Wim de Vos
• Gabriella Wilson

Invite – ‘books by artists’

books by artists’ in the Webb Gallery, QCA

The ‘books by artists’ exhibitors

• Isaac Brown
• Blogger_dad
• Penny Carey-Wells
• Victoria Cooper
• Caroline Craig
• Fiona Dempster
• Hesam Fetrati Angela Gardner
• Annique Goldenberg
• Alannah Gunter
• Institute of Modern Art Cassandra Lehman-Schultz
• Alison Mackay
• Judy Macklin
• Heather Matthew
• Tess Mehonoshen
• Christine Mellor
• Tim Mosely
• night ladder collective
• Naomi O’Reilly
• Adele Outteridge
• Mona Ryder
• Rose Rigley
• Glen Skien
• Doug Spowart
• Wim de Vos

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THE ABBE ARTISTS BOOK FAIR

Artists Book Fair

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Artists Book Fair stallholders

Sue Anderson + Gwen Harrison

Lyn Ashby

Sara Bowen (no image taken)

Deidre Brollo with Christene Drewe and Helen Cole

Penny Carey-Wells

Centre for Regional Arts Practice (Cooper+Spowart) (no image taken)

Marian Crawford with Sarah Bodman

Daniel Dell-Bosca with Victoria Cooper

Robyn Foster + Fiona Dempster

Caren Florance

Robyn Foster (no image taken)

Brad Freeman JAB

Angela Gardner

Griffith Centre for Creative Arts Research (no image taken)

Impress Printmakers: Sue Poggioli + Jennifer Stuerzl

Institute of Modern Art

Sheree Kinlyside

Clyde McGill

Heather Matthew

Anita Milroy book – ‘Biography of a Physicist’ (Image supplied by the artist)

Adele Outteridge + Wim de Vos

QCA Gold Coast (no image taken)

silverwattle bookfoundry (Tim Mosely)

Peta Smith

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ABBE participants also visited Grahame Galleries, The Studio West End and the State Library of Queensland

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The SLQ White Gloves team Christene, Helen and Jeanette

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ABBE Logo

ABBE was an initiative of the Griffith Centre for Creative Arts Research and was coordinated by Dr Tim Mosely and Dr Lynden Stone.

All photographs  © 2015 Doug Spowart

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.