Artist - Book

Artist - Book

Cover: Peter Maloney, Tiny Mirror, 1999, acrylic on canvas, 180 x 150cm (detail)

Artist - Book Tony Coleing Helen Eager Simryn Gill Christopher Hodges Richard Larter Sol Lewitt Peter Maloney Kylie Stillman John R Walker 3 - 24 May, 2014

Š Utopia Art Sydney Work by Richard Larter courtesy of Watters Gallery

Helen Eager, sketchbook, 1996

This is a book filled with books.

Except you can’t touch them, or turn their pages.

This is a book filled with books.

Except there are other things too, like paintings and sculpture.

This is a book filled with books.

Except that it is not a book, it is pixels on a screen.

C.W.

Kylie Stillman, (cue)eucalypt(tpyl), 2013, hand-cut paperback books, 39 x 54 x 11cm

Christopher Hodges, An Open Book, 2013, stainless steel, 41 x 11 x 4.5cm

Right: Helen Eager, sketchbook, 2006

Christopher Hodges, Anemone, 2003, concertina artist book (acrylic on paper),17 x 324cm (unfolded)

Helen Eager, Untitled, 2012, concertina artist book (pen on paper), 12 x 243cm (unfolded)

John R Walker, Mesh Fence, 2012, concertina artist book (gouache on paper), 20 x 378cm (unfolded)

John R Walker, Car Gully, concertina artist book (gouache on paper), 20 x 359cm (unfolded)

The concertina book is a kind of prototype for… an expanded view - two, four or six or more pages can be visible at any particular time, rather than the limited spread available in the traditional sketchbook…. Drawings can be treated as discrete statements or they can spread horizontally; episodic drawings and notations can be read singly or as a series of connected visual observations. The landscape is regarded as a whole, yet, at the same time, it is a journey through motifs – an unfolding.

- Andrew Sayers

Simryn Gill, Jambu Sea, Jambu Air, 2013, artists’ book, edition of 40 (5 available), 21 x 27cm

Leaves collected from a strand of Syzyium grande in the town of Linggi in Negeri Sembilan. The species were previously known as Eugenia grandis. Local names include jambu laut, jambu air; in translation, sea apple, sea water-apple or coastal water-apple.

- Simryn Gill

Tony Coleing, Unknown Landscapes in the Time of Climate Change, 2014, artists’ book, archival inkjet print, edition of 15, 22.5 x 29cm

Tony Coleing, 40 Drawings from 1993, 1995, artists’ book, archival inkjet print, edition of 80, 22.5 x 29cm

There are so many ‘by chance’ links to be made – for example just grabbing a handful of books at random can form an accidental poem.

What is of note and what connects them all is that they are ‘unwanted titles’. These books have had their useful life and been discarded; now I use them like you may use the reverse side of paper from the recycle bin for phone messages.

- Kylie Stillman

Kylie Stillman, Bill, 2012, hand-cut paperback books, 19 x 20 x 13cm

Richard Larter, When did you last wash your feet, 2014, artists’ book, 28 x 21.5cm. Courtesy of Watters Gallery, Sydney.

Richard Larter, Wildlife of PAT, 2014, artists’ book, 28 x 22.5cm. Courtesy of Watters Gallery, Sydney.

Richard Larter, Design culture wide open, 2014, artists’ book, 21.5 x 15cm. Courtesy of Watters Gallery, Sydney/

Peter Maloney, Untitled, 2013-14, artists’ book, 33.5 x 24cm

Peter Maloney, Untitled, 2011-14, artists’ book, 33.5 x 24cm

Helen Eager, Angle, 1998, artist’s book, archival inkjet print, edition of 15, 18 x 10.5cm

Helen Eager, The Edge, 2000, artist’s book, archival inkjet print, edition of 10, 17 x 72cm (unfolded)

Sol Lewitt, Nine Linocuts, 2006, book of linocuts, edition of 26, 45.7 x 45.7cm

Helen Eager, Untitled, 2011, concertina artist’s book (pen on paper), 15 x 243cm (unfolded)

I will often go through a long process of drawing - lots and lots of drawing - that’s where I sort all my things out... when I do my books, I make sure I use every colour. I just love it, I love using. I love to pick up a red pen and work out what I’m going to do with it - with an orange or green or yellow or black.

- Helen Eager

Tony Coleing, Lines, 2014, artist’s book, archival inkjet print, edition of 15, 22.5 x 29cm

John R Walker, Shoalhaven at Bombay, 2009, concertina artist book (gouache on paper), 22 x 162cm (unfolded)

Painting is a two dimensional surface presenting an illusion, and the illusion is created on the surface by the painterly techniques applied to it… There are all these things going on in the picture plane to create a scene for a drama to unfold… Whereas a sculpture is typically a hard thing that you can bump into and trip over, and it occupies space wherever you put it… but it also has its illusory capabilities, and that’s to do with its shape and its form, it’s not to do with its painterly dimensionality... The concertina book is somewhere in between.

- Christopher Hodges

Christopher Hodges, Moon Dance, 2003, concertina artist book (ink on paper), 35 x 337.5cm (unfolded)

Christopher Hodges, Four New Things, 2005, chinese ink on chinese scroll, 205 x 46.5cm

Kylie Stillman, Hanging Basket, Fishbone Fern, 2010, hand-cut encyclopaedias, 200 x 40 x 53cm

Peter Maloney, Tiny Mirror, 1999, acrylic on canvas, 180 x 150cm

Man, the imperfect librarian, may be the product of chance or of malevolent demiurgi; the universe, with its elegant endowment of shelves, of enigmatical volumes, of inexhaustible stairways for the traveler and latrines for the seated librarian, can only be the work of a god.

To perceive the distance between the divine and the human, it is enough to compare these crude wavering symbols which my fallible hand scrawls on the cover of a book, with the organic letters inside: punctual, delicate, perfectly black, inimitably symmetrical.

- Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel

Artist - Book Tony Coleing Helen Eager Simryn Gill Christopher Hodges Richard Larter Sol Lewitt Peter Maloney Kylie Stillman John R Walker 3 - 24 May, 2014

Utopia Art Sydney 2 Danks Street Waterloo NSW 2017 Telephone: + 61 2 9699 2900 email: utopiaartsydney@ozemail.com.au www.utopiaartsydney.com.au Š Utopia Art Sydney

Utopia Art Sydney 2 Danks Street Waterloo NSW 2017 Telephone: + 61 2 9699 2900 email: utopiaartsydney@ozemail.com.au www.utopiaartsydney.com.au