The folding of pages
The remaking of things
Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
NGV commission for Melbourne Now 2023
The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia
Fed Square
Until Sunday 20th August, 2023
NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair 2023
Stallholder Fair
NGV International
180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne
Friday 19th May – Sunday 21st May, 2023
Little Esme has headed to Sale to winter with other Grey-headed flying foxes at Moonshadow Flying Fox Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre; and the The Friends of Bats and Bushcare (FoBB) Soft Release Program has drawn to a quiet close for another season, with all 92 graduates re-released into the wild world. As shared recently by FoBB, “it takes a big team to get the job done”, as the following statistics attest:
Grey-headed flying foxes = 92
Volunteers = 23
Volunteer hours = 300
Fruit = 1,000kg
High Protein Supplement (HPS) = 25kg
Helping out with the support feeding at Yarra Bend remains a lovely end to the season for us, and is something we intend to continue. The peaceful ritual of cutting fruit, walking down the steep hill with a full wheelbarrow, and back up again with an empty one, past the bell-shaped correa we knew first from artworks (like Richard Bunbury’s Green Native Fuchsia, which we featured thrice over in our collage, The remaking of things) and later from this custom, is something we will miss. It is the opportunity to observe, as much as it is the purpose and the pattern.
In the spirit of noting seasonal change, April ended with a Teacher Masterclass and Under 5s session, and May began with final stage preparations for the ninth Melbourne Art Book Fair. Said with a wink, such turnarounds call, naturally, for zine cutting and zine folding on the go.
Press play, do, if you’ve not already.
Especially for the Melbourne Art Book Fair (please see details below), we will have three brand new zines; a Brilliant Gathering of bird song; a memory Recall-ed (created for the United Artists 2023’s project, We Remember, for World Book Night, 2023, and ready for release at the fair presently); and Hold, made, of course, while on hold (thank-you iiNet); and one new artists’ book, The remaking of things, of which you are quite familiar with now.
“THE FEW SPECIES THAT MADE IT THROUGH THE END-CRETACEOUS BIRD-APOCALYPSE ARRIVED IN THE POST-ASTEROID WORLD EQUIPPED WITH AN ABILITY TO SING. THE DIVERSE SOUND-SCAPES OF BIRDSONG AROUND THE WORLD TODAY ARE BUILT FROM THIS LEGACY AS SURVIVORS EXPANDED THEIR RANGES AND SPLIT INTO NEW SPECIES. IT IS LIKELY, THEREFORE, THAT BIRD SOUNDS AS WE KNOW THEM ONLY ARRIVED AFTER THE RESURGENCE OF FORESTS FOLLOWING THE CALAMITY OF THE CRETACEOUS. IN BIRDSONG, WE HEAR THE EVOLUTIONARY LEGACY OF RENEWAL AFTER GREAT LOSS.”
We’ve been working on this artists’ book version of our Melbourne Now commission for some time now, waiting for the glue to dry, and look forward to revealing it at the fair next weekend. We look forward to seeing you there, if you can make it. And for those of you who cannot make it to the fair, but would like to purchase a copy, editions of our artists’ book will soon be available through our online store. So, too, the zines.
This artist’ book, The remaking of things, is intended as an embrace, a wild-like printed refuge, and we invite you to enter the pages of it in a similar spirit as we hope you would, and have, the gallery, with eyes open, ears pricked up, and hearts unlatched.
Our new artists’ book is a foldout of the gallery space at the NGV, only the corners of the composition are now determined by where the pages join as opposed to the four corners of the gallery. It is 1437mm long, and can be configured to make a gallery, of sorts, replete with a folded doorway. The book comes housed in a silver slipcase, made from the same silver foil paper collage elements within the work currently on display at Melbourne Now. Printed, too, with a photographic scene from the glass plate negative of Nicholas Caire’s Fairy scene at the Landslip, Blacks’ Spur (c. 1878). Please head here to read more. It also includes a complete list of the 100 pieces from the NGV collection within the collage in the gallery and the collage now upon the printed page. You can comb through the full list here.
At the time of making The remaking of things, we envisaged the gallery like a foldout concertina book. We imagined ourselves tiny before the pages (walls). With the gallery version printed upon paper as well, it really is like stepping not just into a forest but a book, for us.
Melbourne Art Book Fair
Friday 19th May 10am–5pm
Saturday 20th May 10am–5pm
Sunday 21st May 10am–5pm
Free, no booking required
The Melbourne Art Book Fair’s in-person stallholders return to the NGV Great Hall in 2023. Visitors will have the opportunity to purchase publications from a diverse range of art publishers, artists and designers. Stalls in the Great Hall include the NGV design store, independent art book makers, established publishing houses and art galleries will present books, magazines, zines, art prints and more. This year, visitors will discover a wide range of emerging imprints who are brand new to Melbourne Art Book Fair.
artfair.melbourne
Image credit: Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, Recall (detail), 2023, featuring the moving panoramas attributed to the Borgmann Brothers, ca. 1853.
