LIVE BOOKBINDING

2021 NGV MELBOURNE ART BOOK FAIR

Snorkels at the ready, it’s time once more for the NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair. The seventh time around the pool, would you believe. (Rewind! NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015.)

With our stall at the NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair being a virtual one this year, and primarily because we will miss the back and forth delight of showing you our artists’ books and zines in person, we will be binding editions of our brand new artists’ book, Dip and bob, live on our instagram, @gracialouise, on the last day of the fair.

We’ve no Great Hall for a backdrop, but you can watch us fold and glue spines, score watercolours, and fold kelp-band covers in our version of ‘live tabling’. From our lounge room floor to your screen in hand, wherever you may be. We are hoping that Lottie, Arthur and Lenni will make an appearance, should they choose.

Editions of Dip and Bob will be bound before your eyes with the option of purchasing that which you see. Just leave a message with your order (through our online store) or in the comments during the live feed, should this appeal to you.

An edition of fifty, Dip and bob is available exclusively through our online store and ready for pre-order. Editions of Dip and bob have been acquired by Monash University Library, National Library of Australia, State Library of NSW, State Library of Queensland, State Library Victoria, and University of Melbourne’s Baillieu Library.

Louise and I invite you to dip into our live binding stream with your thoughts, binding questions, or to simply chat away. Like the work which once was a zine-in-the-making but grew (and continues to grow) into an artists’ book, who knows how it may morph.

Please tune in to our Instagram LIVE
@gracialouise
Sunday 28th of March, 2021
Noon – 2pm AEDT

An online event presented as part of the 2021 NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair

The fair launches (tomorrow) Friday 26th of March. Until then, here is a look at how things are forming. And all because one day the local pool was too busy with a school carnival so an alternative dip was sought.

Smack your lips. Dream of the sea.

Included above, alongside our process and details, photographs of ‘The Cape’s marine ecosystem; the kelp forest’, by Faine Loubser (@fainepearl), @seachangeproject; ‘Fish and molluscs call the kelp forests home’, BBC News, 2018, photo source: Getty Images; and Kyle McBurnie.

Until then, feel free to explore the Dance archives which are slowly filling with written pieces from 2012 to when this space launched in 2016, lest they get lost on the sea bed.

Image credit: Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, Dip and bob (detail), 2021, artists’ book