EXHIBITION SCHEDULE:

Millenium Gallery, Blenheim: 27 March – 2 May 2021

Hastings City Art Gallery, Foyer Gallery: 22 May – 1 August 2021

201 Eastbourne Street East, Hastings 4122, HAWKE’S BAY

Previous Exhibition: Aratoi Museum of Art + History, Masterton, Wairarapa. 2 November – 8 December 2019

Ashburton Gallery, Ashburton: 10 December 2020 - 21 February 2021

Premiere Award ($1,000) Gracen Salisbury (Hawke’s Bay), Feral

Media/Materials used: Eco dyed paper, cotton thread, cat fur, cat bones, inkjet images, linocut.

Artist's Statement: Feral / Fear all explores the known history of a female free-living kitten in New Zealand.
Historically in western culture, the book has always been closely linked to animals. Paper was made out of parchment, the by-product of animals that had been skinned, stretched and dried.
While in modern times books are now made with paper for pages. My book is situated within the foundations of this western ideology, the book and our exploitation of nonhuman animals. I aim to return the animal agency of not only the kitten that this book is made from, but also to the historical origins of the book. In the past animals had been rendered down so that the stories of humankind could be applied to them, I challenge this by using similar remnants from a free-living kitten but with the focus based on a critique of speciest ideology.
She becomes part of the book, while also retaining her animal agency.

Three Merit Awards ($150)

Merit Award: Esther Hansen (Pukekohe), Bee Box Book, 2019

Media/Materials used: Oil based monoprint, collograph, laser cut woodcut, pronto plate prints on Fabriano paper, bee hive frames, bee hive box, wood and aluminium supports.

Dimensions: 58 cm x 2.3 metres x 46 cm

Description: 9 used Langstroth beehive frames suspended above a hive box supported by wood and extendable aluminium supports. Prints on Fabriano paper on the front and back side of each hive frame.

Artist's Statement: “The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire” – The Bloodhound Gang
“… I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire.” Greta Thunburg
The Bee Box Book Project converts a Langstroth hive box into a “book”. Each side expressing an aspect of beekeeping and the artist’s own personal bee mythology. On one side, the factual story of Steve Nimmer, a California beekeeper who tried to rescue, but lost, most of his hives in the 2017 Thomas Wildfires. Global warming is increasing the risk of fires that destroy everything in their path, including whole ecosystems, homes and businesses. They also show the power of man working with nature to rebuild and restore. We are on the brink of ecological disaster. Bees are dying from the impact of human practices.
The other pages are more fantastical, from ladies riding bees side-saddle to bees dancing jive. What if a Queen bee really did rule the world?
Monoprint, laser-cut woodcuts and pronto lithography have been layered to create images that celebrate a pivotal moment in our species.
Our house is on fire, will we just let it burn?

List of collaborators: Esther Hansen concept, design and printing; Rebecca Bent paper cuts, gluing and framing; Meg Wilson expert inking of pronto plates.

Merit Award: Julz Henderson (Hastings), Land of the Mist, 2019

Media/Materials used: Native plants , Japanese tissue paper, encaustic wax, Tiepolo 290gsm, Harakeke Paper, Maps, Brown Kraft Card, Variety of printing techniques, letterpress, stitching, waxed linen thread

Description: LAND OF THE MIST - is a 4 page artist book, of various printed images depicting the shapes, structures and forms of Lake Waikaremoana, which was created from the great landslide that formed the Lake to what it is today.
Along with the NZ Native bush eco-dyed on Japanesse tissue, waxed and text which shows the combining of cultures, whom are working together to be guardians of this beautiful - peaceful - spiritual piece of Aotearoa.

Artist's Statement: LAND OF THE MIST - Lake Waikaremoana is a spiritual place for me. the history of the great landslide that formed the Lake. The mana and belonging has a strong connection for me. The structure of the ranges and rock formation with the NZ Native bush which flows down to the lake creating wonderful shapes and shadows. I find this very inspiring. The native plant life in their natural form is stunning, the colours and shapes. I wanted to capture the spiritual/peacefulness within my pages, but also being aware of the shapes and structures of the land and plant life. The delight of living there and working with the community to look after and be guardians of this beautiful spiritual place in Aotearoa.

Merit Award: Heather Partel (Palmerston North), O_B_X_P_N_E, 2019

Media/Materials used: Media: Letterpress; Materials: MDF covered with buckrum and card pages

Artist's Statement: My purpose for this book is to provide a different way of looking at the letters of the Latin alphabet, by the cutting and layering of the letters to find new shapes and references. Because the circular pages are movable by infinite degrees from one pivotal point, these relationships are also infinite in the way black meets white and black meets black. The circular nature of the pages allows the reader to spread the sheets to reveal multiple crescents intersecting the letters and forming new designs. Where there are letters, people naturally look to find words and meaning; my challenge to the reader is to find something new in the beauty of one of our most familiar forms of design, a new codex and ever changing script.
While the pages focus on the visual starkness of black against white, the cover adds the element of texture like a new moon with the faintest shadow of relief, awaiting the light of the sun to reveal its surface.
For my mother, Shirley Partel. A thank you for supporting my printing adventures, finding my first printing press and buying the wooden type used in this artist book.

Project Brief

Works by PCANZ members and selected by Paul Thompson.

Paul Thompson: curator, collector, author, artist, zook inventor. Formerly the Director of the Museum of Wellington. He also hand-makes books and works that are conceived as art objects in themselves and are bought by collectors, curators or connoisseurs, nationally and internationally. He also works with Wai-te-Ata Press initiating publications that explore typographical and structural boundaries.

Concept: The book as art object evolved in the mid-20th Century when artists began experimenting with the book format as a means to express their ideas, with or without narrative elements, often without text at all. Today, artists have taken the concept of a ‘book’ further, creating art objects inspired by the form and/or function of a book.

PCANZ members are invited to explore and expand the possibilities that makes an art object an “artists’ book.” Work must show a connection between content/concept and the chosen structure.

“Is a book the sum of certain requisite characteristics? If a book has no pages is it still a book? If it cannot be opened is it still a book? These are the things I like to ask as I make my books. My artists' books are a way of questioning bookishness.” Artist Statement: Linda Newbown

Media: The work must include traditional printmaking techniques.

Works made exclusively of inkjet and or giclee prints will not be accepted although these print methods may form a lesser part of the final work. Altered books may be included but the final work must include traditional printmaking technique as an integral component of the work.

Collaborations: are invited. Each entry must however be an original, uncopied work made by the artist(s). If the artist has been assisted by technicians or collaborators, full details must be identified in the colophon submitted with the entry.

Contacts: Kathy Boyle (Hawkes Bay) kathy.boyle@xtra.co.nz , Toni Hartill (Ak Rep) tonihartill@outlook.co.nz

Scroll down further for all other selected works in the exhibition - click on image to enlarge - alphabetical order of surname

Introductory Essay by Paul Thompson as it appears in the exhibition catalogue

Printing of a ...?

It was just over ten years ago that noted Aotearoa/New Zealand poet and printer Alan Loney had a how-to book published by Black Pepper Press in Australia. Called Printing of a Masterpiece it wasn't really an operational manual even though it did discuss problems such as the printing of black on black, small editions, or how to prevent damped paper from going mouldy. It was really about his personal philosophy of print; covering history, ambition, problem solving, and experiences entwined into a coherent and fascinating whole.

One of the things I pondered during the selection of Thinking/Unfolding was gender - would a female book artist call a summation of her life's work The Printing of a Mistress Piece? The selection for Thinking/Unfolding was blind, not literally but the names of the entrants were kept anonymous. However I suspect the sizable majority of the artists, many of whom were members of the Print Council of Aotearoa/New Zealand, were female. This intuition is based on an analysis across artist's books survey publications and exhibition catalogues. Is this because that many of the skills and attitudes needed such as stitching, dexterity with fine details and working collaboratively seems to have a strong female bias?

Whatever. There are no defining features of the exhibition as a whole - the works certainly stand for themselves whether the maker was female, male, lesbian, gay, transgender or any of the other groups that identify outside the conventional majority. So is there another overriding identifier such as 'regional realists' or 'recent Elam/Ilam graduates'? I think not. All that can possibly be said is that there was an eclectic variety. Materials, formats, techniques, ideas, complexities, simplicities, collaborations all manifested. All are artist's books. With such an alchemical brew making up the exhibition, the question is raised ' what exactly is an artist's book?’

This is an endlessly debatable point much like the hoary old 'is it art, is it craft' debate. Most people, apart from theorists, critics and writers, just get on with making - sometimes informed by a deep knowledge of form, materials and craft - sometimes guided largely by their own singular creativity. Both approaches were present in the nearly forty Thinking/Unfolding entries. To advance analysis a little history helps. Artist's books as we currently regard them are really a mid-C20th form although of course printing and printmaking are centuries older. As a concise and inclusive definition maybe an artist's book is ‘a work made by an artist referencing the book in some way and intended to be a work of art in itself’. With the term ‘artist's book’ being a recent one it may be instructive to traverse a little of the Aotearoa/NZ story as artists made books well before the current term came into vogue.

Early as 1847 there was a trained artist here (admittedly passing through) called George French Angus. He painted scenes and portraits of Maori for exhibition but also used these images as lithographed coloured plates in a folio book called The New Zealanders Illustrated that he arranged to publish himself. While the idea was conceived and the images collected in Aotearoa/NZ it was printed overseas. Forward exactly100 years and local writer, poet and print enthusiast  A. R. D. Fairburn published, How to Ride a bicycle in Seventeen Lovely Colours, a brief typographic extravaganza and a satire on didacticism printed on cheap paper. Even Colin McCahon, regarded as the great pioneering modernist and icon of NZ art had a turn. He created a roughly A4 sized 25 sheet brown paper book called 15 Drawings from December 51 to May 52 as a gift to the founder of the literary Landfall magazine Charles Brasch. Bound with string through punched holes it is easily recognizable as the modern form of the artist’s book.

Much more recently Hannah Salmon won the Wellington Zine of the Year Award in 2010 with a grotesque, interactive, surrealist inspired, well printed and solidly constructed wire bound book called Daily Secretion (Third Emission). Wait a minute – zine of the year? This is supposed to be about artist’s books? Precisely. Definition rears its ugly head again. It was called a zine by the maker but would segue nicely into Thinking/Unfolding although just a shade gungier - but that would make it stand out.

The pieces in Thinking/Unfolding are gentler – not in shying away from strong subjects such as climate change, species exploitation, ecological issues, disasters or society’s pressures over female appearance - but not so ‘in your face’ as many zines are. That may have something to do with zine culture or maybe just age as zinesters are often fired by the enthusiasm of youth. The approaches and messaging in Thinking/Unfolding are subtler and more tempered. This means that the individual works are ‘art’ rather than ‘propaganda’.

But the variety of materials and forms could certainly be described as adventurous. The use of metal in several works is reminiscent of the Italian Futurist books of the early C20th and that movement wasn’t shy in proclaiming an aggressive and radical manifesto. Metal plates and fittings, tins, polycarbonate, mirror, wood, fur, bone and leather in Thinking/Unfolding, in addition to the traditional materials of paper, card and bookcloth, push the boundaries of the book.

Circling back to our discussion on boundaries and terminology; the very fact that the term ‘artist’s book’ doesn’t have a hard and fast definition is a positive rather than restrictive thing as Thinking/Unfolding shows. Leave the gates open.

Paul Thompson

Lee Brogan (Kerikeri), Panspermia, 2019

Media/Materials used: Cyanotype on Fabriano, digital inkjet, recycled books, washi tape, various papers, paint, adhesives.

Dimensions: 35mm x 205mm x 125mm (closed) variable when opened

Description: A hybrid altered book/artist's book with original handmade cyanotype prints, arranged in an accordion style fold-out and utilising recycled books using collage and construction techniques. Digital inkjet printmaking supplements the cyanotype in the altered cover and inside the back cover.

Artist's Statement: "Panspermia is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by space dust, meteoroids, asteroids, comets, planetoids, and micro-organisms…"

But what if we could glimpse an alternative universe where life evolved similarly but with different outcomes - presenting creatures almost recognisable but not quite of this world. A volume emerges that may or may not be from here and now, a visual story of this possible panspermic event - where did it come from, who wrote it and how did it get here? We may never know, but the object itself is as much an enigma as the story it tells.

This work is both an altered book and an artist's book in that it combines original handmade elements which incorporate the historical practice of cyanotype printmaking with aspects of found objects (old books) using collage and construction techniques. Digital inkjet printmaking supplements the cyanotype in the altered cover and provides a surprise element inside the back cover. Conceptually the work is influenced by surrealism, abstraction and contemporary philosophy including the idea of the multiverse and the holographic universe theory.

Kate Buckley (Hokitika), Béal Scaoilte, 2019

[Story +Secret. A Gaelic phrase, used to describe someone inclined to let a secret escape.]

Media/Materials used: Cotton rag paper, cloth, card, inks, graphite, gold, silver, pva glue & acid free tape.

Dimensions: 150 x 150 x 50mm (closed) Open- variable dimensions.

Description: Cascading book, with 15 folded pages, worked on both sides. Designed to be seen from many angles. Variable dimensions, Display to suit the context.
Relief & intaglio printmaking techniques. Embossings ( penny coin- harp/ hen - Ireland 1942), button & cloth. Cast brooch with interlocked figures in a Celtic style. Graphite script ( illegible) and some tonal worked shapes in graphite times. Shellac based coloured inks. Gold and silver leaf.

Artist's Statement: Béal scaoilte- A Gaelic phrase, used to describe someone inclined to let a secret escape.
There is an old Irish story about a young man who knew the King’s secret.
The secret made him sick.
He walked deep into the forest and whispered it to the oldest oak tree.
Later the tree was cut, and the wood was used to make a fine harp.
The harp was played at the king’s court, it sang the secret loud for all to hear.
Nobody tells what happened next. This book is constructed to reflect the story and the nature of secrets.
Closed, this book has very little to tell.
Open, it can be read from many angles and from any starting point.
There are lots of ways to retell a story, so the printed images are made in relief, intaglio, embossing and printed in a variety of muted colours. The images hold many meanings. The embossed penny coins have harps and hens, some leaves are eyes and mouths. There are acorns, gold & silver fruit and ears of corn. The coloured leaves were hand painted after printing. Leaves scatter and travel on the wind.

Beth Charles (Palmerston North), Hard to please, 2019

Media/Materials used: Wood, paper, oil-based ink, thread, metal hinge and screws

Dimensions: 227x150x28mm

Description: Hardback book. Relief prints with machine stitching on paper, bound and hinged into wooden cover

Artist's Statement: Sturdy book built to withstand the buffeting from the ‘School of Hard Knocks’.

Definition of ‘School of Hard Knocks’ ...’an idiomatic phrase meaning the education one gets from life’s often negative experiences in contrast with one’s formal education’. Wikipedia.

Julia Ellery (Whanganui), Shades Of Venus, 2019

Media/materials used: mezzotint and drypoint etchings on hahnemuhle paper, mixed media, mdf board, mirrors, cardboard, copper wire

Dimensions: 39 x 39cm diameter x 18cm high (if turntable used approx 20cm high)

Description: eight mdf board pages with print of a face on one side and mirror attached on reverse side, placed centrally and fanned out evenly on a larger circular board

Artist's statement: 'the birth of Venus' by Sandro Botticelli painted in 1485 was my inspiration for this book. Venus floating ashore on her scallop shell is a vision of ideal femininity. Her beauty is rewarded by gifts of roses wafting on the breeze, a fitting tribute for a lovely object. Today a granddaughter with similar colouring and fresh fairness reflects on her situation. Can she have the best of both worlds staying centre stage and true to her self or will she be flattered into becoming a decorative onlooker like an ornamental William Morris(1834-18966) wallpaper.

Lisa Feyen, Kathy Boyle (Hawke’s Bay) and Erice Fairbrother (words), After the Storm, 2019

Media/Materials used: Monoprint, sublimination print, screen print, stitch, canvas, encaustic, found paper, plastic, waxed bookbinding cord, mesh.

Dimensions: 770mm x 1650mm x 5mm

Description: ‘After the Storm’ takes the form of a deconstructed book, adapted as a wall hanging. The canvas ‘pages’ are hand printed with layers of image and text sewn side by side in a grid formation. The work is fabricated from materials such as a half burned book, plastic packaging and photographic images gathered on Napier’s beach after a large storm in July 2019.

Artist's Statement: Our collective future is unclear in the face of climate change. ‘After the Storm’ is a response to the concern both collaborating visual artists feel for their immediate environment, and that of the ocean which is choking with manmade waste. Through the disruption of the accepted structure of the book format, the artists describe the feeling of uncertainty the effects of this rising 'storm' will have on mankind.
Napier poet Erice Fairbrother was invited to give a written response, and her words and those of the two artists combine and weave through the work.

Catherine Godwin (Hastings) and Emily Revell (Wellington), You wouldn't judge ME by my cover, would you?, 2019

Media/Materials used: Card collaged prints in a range of techniques from woodcut to drypoint etching collagraph and chine colle

Dimensions: 140cm x140cm x 3mm

Description: A collaged upcycled cardboard package

Artist's Statement: You wouldn’t judge ME by my cover, would you?
Sssshhh, I’m quite shy. You frightened me. Sure. Sure, okay. I know you didn’t mean to.
Yeah, you can open me up. But be gentle. Maybe you don’t think there’s much going on inside. Plain Jane. Pass me on the street without stopping. Kick me to the curb. Yesterday’s rubbish. Marked for the recycling bin. Whatever.
I see you though. I’m always watching. Watching you and thinking. About the world. What’s going to happen to it if we don’t take care. Our world. Your world. Their world. Who are they?
I’m here. Part of the multitude. Just like you. Well, a bit like you. Even if you missed me the first time.
Do take it slow. Soak it up. Explore. Read me.
It’s true I'm fragile. A tiny bit battered. A selection of offcuts. You've got me.
But what’s going on with you? Yeah. Thought so. We agree then. Don’t judge me, not yet. Inside here, that’s just the beginning.

Diane Harries (Whanganui), Creeping Diaspora, 2019

Media/Materials used: Flax paper, driftwood, canes, linen thread

Dimensions: Spine height: 300 mm; Spine depth: 200 mm; Closed width: 650 mm; Open width: 1110 mm

Description: Arched spine mounted on lump of driftwood, with long pages bound to the canes attached to the arch.
Pages are printed with monoprints, stencils and linocuts, depicting invasive vines in New Zealand.

Artist's Statement: My concern is the plethora of invasive vines smothering our New Zealand landscapes and native flora. Mostly imported garden specimens, they have found a very favourable environment where they can thrive as escapees from their cultivated prisons. Some have come by sea – reflected in the driftwood base to the book; some have come by air – represented by the arched spine of the book. Even the pages behave as long unruly outgrowths that wish to spread as far as they can.

Diane Harries (Whanganui), The Tale of the Snail, 2019

Media/Materials used: Flax paper, flax leaves (curled and dried), linen thread

Dimensions: Height 160 mm; Width 600 mm x 600 mm.

Description: Stands as if a star book, permanently open. Pages loop back into the piano-hinge style spine with page ends spiralling through the hinge spine into a vortex in the centre.

Artist's Statement: What did it mean to the medieval scribes who drew knights fighting snails in the margins of their illuminated manuscripts? Historians speculate why, but I perceive it as a warning that time creeps up on all of us, as slowly as a snail. We should be vigilant about how we use our precious time and “seize the day” (carpe diem). The apricot-coloured background collagraph occurred by virtue of paper that had been eaten by snails in the garden.

I am also pushing the boundaries of the book towards the snail’s shell, where everything is turning to spirals, from the curled flax-leaf “skewers” to the pages that have no edge or fold, but simply become the next “page”. Inside and outside are a new parameter for a page. A structure that defies “closing”.

Toni Hartill (Auckland), Vitamin Sea, 2019

Media/Materials used: Print techniques including linocut, monoprint, etching, solarplate; upcycled charts, food tins, cardboard tube

Dimensions: Overall size of “closed” book / size of tube: Height: 320mm Diameter: 115mm. Contents: 7 x cans, the “pages” / “chapters” Height: 45mm, Diameter: 85mm each

Description: 7 food tins, to represent 7 days / a week, have been filled with mini-dioramas of seascapes made from printed and collaged surfaces. The tins are each covered with “weathered” etchings to imitate old labels. These tins behave as the “pages” or “chapters” of the “book” each one revealing another day’s experience. The “cover” of the “book” is the tube, covered with a lino-print intended to look like a retro can label espousing the health benefits of the contents. The tube/can is lined with a lino-printed section of an old chart.
Lifting the tube up and away from the cans, which are stacked facing downwards, each can is then lifted off the stack and turned to reveal a new scene.

Artist's Statement: Inspired by last summer’s trip to the Cavalli Islands, off the Northland coast, I wanted to express how the restorative effects of going to sea are so revitalising that it should be canned and marketed! A large retro “can”, the “book cover”, espouses the health benefits of the contents while a found verse perfectly sums up my own connection to the sea. Inside the book are a week’s supply of smaller cans, the “pages” or “chapters” of the “book”. Each one reveals a new vista and experience at sea, like a visual diary or a ship’s log. Each vista tells a story of a time and a place. These stories will be re-imagined depending on the viewer’s own experiences.
The structural inspiration for this work reflects on the canned food rattling around the bilges of a boat, weathering over time until, when they are eventually eaten, they taste oh so good, strangely far better than they might if eaten in the comforts of home. Simply being at sea is nourishment enough.

Toni Hartill and Celia Walker (Auckland), Forest Notes, 2019

Media/Materials used: various print techniques including linocut, monoprint, cyanotype, various printmaking papers, book board, book linen, cotton tape

Dimensions: Overall size of closed book: Height: 490mm Width: 52mm Thickness: 30mm. Approx overall size of opened book: Ht: 490mm W: (max dimension) 970mm Depth: 900mm

Description: The book is constructed in three pages with many components cut and collaged to form three dioramas when the book is fully opened 360 degrees with pop-out elements and various flaps and folds to add interest and layering. There are also a couple of elements that can be removed and repositioned.

Artist's Statement: Toni Hartill and Celia Walker are amateur botanists, gatherers, and collaborators, with an eye for nature and an urge to collect and record their local environment. The botanical compendium Forest Notes is collated and repurposed from their work for the travelling print project Forest has the Blues. The pop-up book format serves as both a repository for their assembled pieces, a catalogue of sorts, and in its opened-out format as a tactile enticement, an invitation to explore the forest depths. From the forest floor to the canopy, our native bush conceals hidden treasures, but also creeping incursions. The sneaking invasions of pest plants and pathogens threaten the viability of our forest remnants, remnants that are vital for our native species.

Julie Henderson and Pam Hastings (Hawke’s Bay), Emergence, 2019

Media/Materials used: Poly carbon - waxed linen thread - printing inks - printed images - copper wire

Dimensions: 20cm x 20cm x 20cm

Description: Poly carbon cube, with poly carbon pages, screen printed and relief printed attached with waxed linen thread.

Artist's Statement: In August 2016 the Keirunga Creative Hub in Havelock North suffered an unexpected, and consequently debilitating, fire which razed the Performing Arts Centre and caused smoke damage to other buildings.
Keirunga has been functioning as a local arts and craft centre since 1906. In 1929 the gardens were developed, these being gifted to the local Borough Council 1957. Keirunga Garden Society was incorporated in 1967 with additional buildings being gradually added to embrace increasing memberships and artistic interests.
Our entry depicts the emergence of the new rebuild, incorporating the history into the present, and the community passion to reinvent Keirunga into a thriving, functioning creative space. The cube shape showcases the enclosure of the rebuild with the transparency.
The established gardens and bird life creates " The place on the hill where the tui sing".

Jackie Knotts (Tauranga), Hair Story, 2019

Media/Materials used: mulberry paper,water based printing ink,hand coloured acrylic paint

Dimensions: 25cmx26cm

Description: 8 page zine

Artist's Statement: The images are printed on one sheet of mulberry paper which is then folded which is perhaps the reverse of "unfolding" but the story unfolds as you turn the pages.Is a zine a "book"? I don't know the answer to that.It is in no way "precious" The lino cuts were printed by hand not using a press. The "text" are random thoughts rather like post it notes.It relates to one consequence of chemotherapy but also what is real. Wigs are not real but friendship ( red hat ladies) is.Almost anything is possible regarding hair colour but you don't always get the hair you want when it grows back after chemotherapy.The zine format looks flimsy but mulberry paper is strong so there is no need to be precious about handling it - it is meant to be accessible and could easily be duplicated.It's not "fine" art.

Julie Moonlight (Wellington), Trees - A Life Line, 2018/2019

Media/Materials used: Linocut on hand-dyed silk paper and fabric, leaf contact prints, etching, handmade paper, twigs, thread

Dimensions: 170 x 260 x 280

Description: Tunnel book with cut-outs in hand printed original linocut images of trees, birds and nature. The linocuts have been printed on hand-dyed silk paper and also over a leaf contact print. I have ripped and stitched the etching, leaving a gap in between to imply nothingness. The fabric has been printed with my linocut design and I have ripped it and sewn it onto a twig.

Artist's Statement: I have created a tunnel book which invites the viewer to peer within and see elements that are dependent on trees for life. The journey starts with a hillside full of trees and hidden amongst those trees are birds, but when the trees disappear, all that's left is nothing, just empty space. Trees not only provide the air that we breathe, but they provide essential habitat and food for birds and other creatures, both in the trees and on the ground. Everything is interwoven and reliant on each other to maintain a healthy ecosystem. With trees, life can flourish.

My work consists of my original linocut designs (either whole or part images) on hand-dyed paper and fabric. It also shows a leaf contact print interwoven with twigs. The etching shows a sparse landscape, devoid of life. The linocut on fabric strips are intended to imply the wind through the trees, through which you can see a kaka swooping down from its roosting place. I have propped parts of my book up with twigs to further connect with the content of the book and illustrate the support trees give to life on our planet.

Rosemary Mortimer (Otaki), Mr Chen's Big Journey, 2019

Media/Materials used: Leather, offset surface print and collagraph, on paper and plastic

Dimensions: Closed 80 x 70 x 50. Open 80 x 730 x depends on whether it is concertinaed (up to approx 60mm), or flat (5mm), X2.

Description: A book in two parts, which sits as one when closed. Opened it concertinas out into two separate lengths of bound pages. The cover is made from found leather shoe soles and rust printed, non biodegradable recycling bag plastic. The pages are hand cut and printed with a variety of waste paper and plastic packaging.

Artist's Statement: Exploring ideas around consumption and the durability of materials, I print with plastic waste, paper packaging, discarded clothing and footwear. My book is a record of a journey, a log book of the detritus thrown back at us by an angry sea.
I found the remains of an old shoe washed up on Ōtaki beach, the sole embedded with the marks of its travels. Pulling apart the layers of weathered leather, revealed that it was held together with hundreds of tiny bamboo ‘nails’. I considered an Asian origin, perhaps a fishing trawler. In imagining the shoe’s voyage and who it might have belonged to, the name Mr Chen came unbidden…and stayed with me.
In the course of my research I consulted shoe historian Angela Lassig, who felt that it could be much older, perhaps 19th century. When people were poor and materials scarce, cobblers made do with whatever they could find.
However, it found its way here, this small book (in two parts) encased by his shoe soles, evokes the seafaring nature of Mr Chen’s journey, while reflecting on the larger issue of waste materials in our oceans.

Toni Mosley (Auckland), Traverse in the Flinders, 2018

Media/Materials used: Screenprint, handpainted, copper binding

Dimensions: Open (approx) 500 x 160 x 15 mm

Description: This accordion fold book has been screenprinted and handpainted to recreate the Flinders experience. The copper binding has been designed and created by me.

Artist's Statement: This work is based on a camel trek in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia. The individual one of a kind printed pages hold the textures, colours and landscapes we explored. So half travel guide, half discovery notes. The 5 day walk and started and ended at a copper mine so that is why I chose to use it as the binding.
Side note: The camels carried our gear and we walked beside them. They are amazing creatures and have an incredible story how they came to be an integral part of Australian history.

Terrie Reddish (Havelock North), Just my type, 2019

Media/Materials used: Letterpress printing on 300gsm Crane lettra paper, textured/ mottled lining paper, Conservation By Design’s Superior Millboard and leather

Dimensions: 146w x 213h x 36d mm

Description: Leather bound, New Oriental binding with 6 diagonal pocket accordion pages containing 12 removable, letterpress printed type sampler cards

Artist's Statement: JUST MY TYPE looks and functions like a book. It has all the structural elements of a book and is created with all the traditional equipment of the letterpress printer and bookbinder. I wanted to create both a useful tool and a beautiful art object.

thinking…
I often find myself thinking about what typeface/ font/ point size to use in my letterpress printing. Computer mock-ups are never quite the same as printing with cast metal and wood type. I wanted actual printed examples (type samplers) of the different fonts and point sizes for each typeface.

unfolding…
I needed to create a folded paper structure that would present the sampler cards in a way they could be removed and returned, seen and yet protected. Then I read Hedi Kyle’s new book, Art of the Fold, and saw a variety of pocket accordion structures.

binding…
Monique Lallier’s New Oriental binding seemed the perfect way to bind the modified pockets which I had sewn on to folded stubs of paper (inner spine). The resulting book displays a range of type samplers when either lying on its substantial spine or standing with the aid of the leather covered boards.

Nicol Sanders-O'Shea (Tauranga), Repeat: A Printer's Annual, 2019

Media/Materials used: Screen print and inkjet on paper

Dimensions: 2000mm x 2000mm maximum

Description: Title of installation: ‘Repeat: A Printer’s Annual’
Medium: Screen print and inkjet print on paper
Publication ISBN 978-0-473-49625-8
Exhibition Proposal
A printed wall installation, approximately 2000mm x 2000mm with a commercially printed copy of the book to be displayed on a plinth or shelf next to the wall installation. 120 A4 pages to be installed by magnets in a random overlapping group. The prints are double sided, therefore each time the work is presented at different galleries the presentation will change. This installation concept refers to story telling and interpretation of the reader/viewer.
To accompany this installation will be one reproduction copy of all the print works created for this book. The book mimics the old hardbacks of girls and boys annual publications. The order of the pages is determined through the process of making, as the page layouts were completed, to reveal the artists intention changing and evolving over time similar to a story being told by an author.

Dale Sattler assisted with the book publication layout ready for printing

Artist's Statement: REPEAT: A Printer’s Annual presents new works by Nicol Sanders-O’Shea. An annual of random imagery taken from old-world adolescent stories, advertising and printer trouble shooting tests. Her practice often depicts a place polluted with fear, anxiety and disorder. Her choice of medium and outdated illustrations intentionally play on our assumptions and preconceptions. The selected appropriated drawings are turned into screen printed imagery taken from girls and boys annuals. These innocent visual depictions are deliberately messed with, changing these enjoyable children’s stories from idealism and heroism to dislocation and alienation. The copy vs the original is a printmakers debate, can a copy also be an original. This installation presents the original in its hand printed form with a bound mass-produced copy. The outcome could be considered a form of simulacra, when copies are copied and altered significantly they become an original unique work of art.

Media/Materials used: Moulin de gu 230gsm, stone lithography, mono print, collagraph (sand), plexiplate, leather

Dimensions: Closed 760mm x 300mm x 5mm. Open 1500mm x 300mm x 5 mm

Description: For Maori, their historic traditions and connections were passed on through whakairo(carving in wood) and ornamentation on material culture. The connection to Tane(God of the Forrest) and his offspring (paper) are used to explore the difference between maori and pakeha understanding. Maori place a great amount of importance on spoken word (korero) where as for pakeha unless it is written down as in on a contract is not considered as equally valid. Oral histories as opposed to written histories. So oral for maori is greater than written.

Artist's Statement: This book is titled Mohinui 4A2A and is the name of a Maori land block in Waiomio, Northland. The original land deed was given to my mother in-law by a kuia who was born there. The deed which includes the crown stamp, map lines and faded imagery inspired a series of lithographic prints in 1999. The deed hung in my husband’s family homestead (an unlined kauri villa at Waiomio) and was a source of fascination and interest for whanau and manuhiri alike. My mother in-law has been actively involved with Te Tiriti o Waitangi claims since the early 1970s. I have heard many accounts of historical incidents and the social impact of colonization on Maori. Her dedication to exploring the grievances of the Tiriti was one of the reasons the deed was given to her. The book celebrates the phenomenology that only occurs when you are involved in the making, touching and unfolding. It is a sensory response to my unique experience of living close to the whenua on a Maori land block that has such a rich and engaging history.

Heather Bramwell, assisted in some collagraph work and the binding of the book

Beverly Trilllo (Hastings), Hands in Nature, 2019

Media/Materials used: 100% cotton paper, ink, cardboard, cotton fabric

Dimensions: 145H X 550W mm Artist book, 150W x 105H x 10D Box

Description: Eco-dyed cotton paper, linocut (hands), blind embossed, with eco-dyed cotton fabric covered envelope box

Artist's Statement: The folded accordion structure provides the basis for my content, as I wanted to be able to display a continuous repeatable image. Hands in Nature refers to the part we humans have to play, in terms of influencing, changing or preserving nature. The envelope box not only provides a container for the artist book, but acts as a 'release', once it is opened. The contents spill out, no longer confined or constrained. Just as human beings cannot hold back the laws of nature, no matter how hard we try.