#AHemlineofSmoke to #BetweenArtandQuarantine

Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
A Hemline of Sky Through Smoke
A Hemline of Forest Through Smoke
and
A Hemline of Water Through Smoke
2020
Unopened artists’ books, 12 double-sided Indigo Digital CMYK pages with perforated fore-edge and 8 double-sided Indigo Digital CMYK and black pages on 118gsm Mohawk Superfine Smooth Ultra White, with Indigo Digital CMYK covers on 148gsm Mohawk Superfine Smooth Ultra White.
Including a waistband on 118gsm Mohawk Superfine Smooth Ultra White, and paper knife on 1400gsm boxboard.
Printed by Bambra
Bound by the artists
(Each an) edition of 100, with 10 artists’ proofs

A little over a month ago, we were at the NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair and our world and our experience of it felt very different to now. We launched our new artists’ books, and Louise’s pocket zine of green, Rewild, as the supermarket shelves cleared of toilet paper rolls and pasta packets, and an atmosphere of panic took hold. Emails, those we received and those we sent, opened or closed with a shared expression, in these troubling, uncertain, strange, scary times; the promise of seeing one another when all is right, well, restored; and a reference to the world, time, days being upside down. And it is, upside down, the world. It is still more-than troubling. And it is overwhelming because we can’t hope to “return to normal because the normal that we had was precisely the problem”.

To counter the immense sadness and scariness of watching this all unfold, we have enjoyed recreating paintings for your amusement, as part of art in a time of quarantine. We are aware we have a small bubble and a safe nest, our loved ones are all safe and healthy too. We are self isolating, and when we look at the world, our lounge room bears little in connection with the news.

We are selling copies of our artists’ books online, and our zines as ever, should you wish a copy or have the means. And we’ll be continuing to treat our instagram as an extended refuge of our home, sharing the light parts with you.

Chocolate, our seventh foster cat, even makes an appearance as a breakfasting cat, and as chocolate in a box.

Recreated, at a glance,
An Evening at Home (1888)
Sir Edward John Poynter

Lady Shirley, in fantastic habit, full-length (Also recorded as Portrait of an Unknown Woman and Lady in white lawn masque habit) (c. 1639–51)
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (died 1636)

Breakfast with the Cat
Rudolf Epp (1834–1910)

Portrait of the artist’s wife (c. 1902)
Rupert Bunny (1864–1947)

Portrait of a young Man holding a Dog and a Cat
Dosso Dossi (c. 1486–1542) (attributed to)

Portrait of a Lady with a Lapdog (1537–1540)
Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1572)

(The Letter Writer (1680), sort of, by Frans van Mieris)

Photos then, of us standing close, connecting only by elbow bumps and toe taps, and photos now speak of two different worlds, from #AHemlineofSmoke to #BetweenArtandQuarantine.

A Hemline of Sky, Forest, and Water Through Smoke
Available as a set, with waistband and paper knife

A Hemline of Sky Through Smoke
A Hemline of Forest Through Smoke
A Hemline of Water Through Smoke
And available individually

(Editions 1–75 sold as sets; editions 76–100 sold individually)

Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.

We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

Arundhati Roy, ‘The pandemic is a portal’, Financial Times, 4th April, 2020

Image credit: Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, A Hemline of Water through Smoke, 2020, photographed by Tim Gresham