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Begin with A for artists’ books, from the most recent to the very first one.
We make artists’ books collaboratively, as a team, if you like, and have been doing so since 1999.
To date, we have created 108 artists’ book titles.
Place the apostrophe before the ‘s’ or after the ‘s’, we don’t mind; we just like to make books. Artists’ books with drawings, with elements of collage, hand coloured with pencil, cut out and altered. Every step, every part of the process, every learning curve, holds us besotted. -
We fell into the making of these artists’ books seemingly by accident, without even realising, much like our collaboration.
A turn here, a turn there, and here we are. In our books, we call upon a wide range of sources, all the while seeking to explore, through inventive narrative, a heady combination of new and existing worlds where wild thoughts take physical form and imagination is given free rein.
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While one book is finished, another is in the works, be it as idea or the mechanics of the thing.
The process, the interest, it is ongoing.
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Copies of our artists’ books are available for a requested leaf through at:
Artspace Mackay, Melbourne Museum, Monash University Library, National Library of Australia, State Library of New South Wales, State Library of Queensland, State Library Victoria, University of Melbourne Library (Australia); Tate Library, and the University of West England (UK); Cynthia Sears Collection, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Environmental Design Library, Berkeley University of California, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, and North Dakota State University (USA).
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Restoring corridors is a multi-panelled, double-sided artists’ book that when hung on the gallery wall makes an interchangeable, reversible 100cm x 300cm slice of biodiversity in flux.
Including
An extract from Kelly Fliedner's A message, a Point of Connection, a Gesture to Where We Are, from Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery’s National Works on Paper 2024 catalogue
Bilateral Symmetry, released into the wild at the tenth Melbourne Art Book Fair, 2024.
Including
Gloriously Wild: How artists Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison opened a tiny wildlife shelter in their backyard, Brita Frost, The Lost Island, 2024
The challenge we set: to use what we had to make something especially for World Book Night 2024’s theme, In praise of birds.
Bower Ashton Library, UWE Bristol, City Campus at Bower Ashton, Bristol, UK
Including
Q & A for RMIT University’s School of Art students Rain Richardson, Sherin Prawira, and Alannah Borg, 2024
What if you could grow a forest from a collection. What if you could weave a floor to ceiling landscape from E. G. Adamson’s Snow coral (1930s–1940s) and Louisa Anne Meredith’s Study for gum-flowers and ‘love’ (c. 1860). Slide Tom Roberts’s She-oak and sunlight (1889) alongside Tom Humphrey’s Summer walk (c. 1888), and glimpse Grace Cossington-Smith’s Bottlebrushes (1935) through the foliage.
To those who require foraging resources and roosting sites.
To the ingenious ecological kindness of the pollinators and seed dispersers.
The echolocators catching insects on the wing. The leaf-consuming fuel-reducers.
The intricate connection of all things.
There were once trees growing under the roads. There are still creeks flowing beneath the directional pathways we’ve imposed.
An artists’ book to take you within the forest, created especially for Biosphere.
Including
Biosphere — a sense of belonging catalogue essays by Felicity Spear and Penelope Gebhardt, 2021–2022
Inspired by the Collection, as part of World of the Book, Dome Galleries, State Library Victoria, 2024–2025
Empty the room. View it from the outside in. Brick by brick. Twig by twig. At the beginning: what is there?
An artists’ book featuring variations of the original Bowerbird collages we created especially for Genevieve Lacey’s Bower.
Including
Inspired by the Collection, as part of World of the Book, Dome Galleries, State Library Victoria, 2024–2025
Dive into a 620cm long digital collage with an original watercolour cover, created especially for the NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair 2021.
A Hemline of Sky Through Smoke
A Hemline of Forest Through Smoke
A Hemline of Water Through Smoke
Including
B is for Book, Frankeinstein Press exhibition, Bristol, UK
For the Museum of Aphorisms and Platitudes, we created a real but not real 24-page catalogue of Through a glass eye.
Paw Pad Path was selected for the 2018 Libris Awards: Australian Artists’ Book Prize exhibition at Artspace Mackay. Paw Pad Path was acquired by Artspace Mackay.
I think all the world is falling
No longer six feet under
Disrupted and rumpled
Dim wood, spark bright
A warmed pebble in my hand
From Adelie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) to Zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), a digital edition of the unique state artists’ book Prattle, scoop, trembling: a flutter of Australian birds (2016).
Your nimble tread
Your untroubled verse
This artists’ book, The Company You Keep, was released into the wild at the 2016 Melbourne Art Book Fair at the National Gallery of Victoria. In addition, this artists’ book of Yellow-headed parrots and Laughing owls was acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria.
Whether knee-deep in carpet weave or native grass clump, this naturalist's companion is misleading, but its dedication, sincere. Created especially for and exhibited in its entirety as part of Birds: Flight paths in Australian Art at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery.
Including
Leah Muddle, True or False? Milly Sleeping: Quick Interview with Gracia Haby of Gracia & Louise, 2017
In continuation of a theme explored for Animal Instinct (2016), thirteen costumed Salvaged Relatives on cartes de visite have been paired with drawings of the same collage element in a new and arguably more natural setting.
Including
Printing the Page, State Library Victoria (2016)
Because I Like You is based on the concept of a love letter to ten mammals.
Including
Contemporary Paper: Celebrating a Year of Print (2016)
Wrap Up (2015)
In a borrowed costume from Pulcinella, deigned by Giorgio de Chirico, 1932, with a Gouldian finch (Erythrura gouldiae) looking to form a charm and others.
Salvaged Relatives, edition I
Salvaged Relatives, edition II
Salvaged Relatives, edition III
An artists’ book twenty-six pages in length, made especially for the National Gallery of Victoria’s inaugural Melbourne Art Book Fair, NGV International, May 2015, which at first glance appears to take place in several of the 15,000 rooms of the Château de Fontainebleau.
Including
Gracia & Louise on making artists’ book, State Library Victoria (2015)
A suite of seventeen collages made especially for and exhibited as part of In Your Dreams (Counihan Gallery, 2014), and accompanying dream text, assembled in a handmade Solander box guarded by Petrouchka. This artists’ book is now in the collection of State Library Victoria.
A pair of artists’ books made especially for and exhibited as part of In Your Dreams (Counihan Gallery, 2014), which takes place in the Palace of Versailles, a royal château in the Île-de-France region of France, and is now in for the collection of Monash University Library (Caulfield Campus).
Under the water, with a two-colour eye-glass, something similar
As if from the clouds, restless
The Loon of Swan Hill seeks an audience
In Louise Jennison’s A Year of Southern Hemisphere Birds unique state artists’ book, twelve birds are brought together and their portraits hand-drawn for posterity.
This artists’ book was launched alongside A Year of Southern Hemisphere Birds in the Leigh Scott Room of the Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne, 2013.
Made especially for and exhibited as part of Charms of the Gloaming (2012), this collaborative hand-bound concertina artists’ book, Beneath the screen of closed eyelids (Port-Said), features twelve hand-coloured scenic views of Port-Said each with collage elements.
The weather, clement, and perfect for mooching, ambling, swanning, indeed, walking As inclination directs.
Testing the laws of hazard
This is where the dormouse lives
A headdress to show you how much I care
All that’s bewitching by the water (Capri)
And with that, she sets off on the journey home
In addition to our online store, copies of some of our artists’ books and prints can be found and purchased in a handful of places both close to home and further afield: Australian Print Workshop; Douglas Stewart Fine Books; and Juvelis Books (USA); and Vamp & Tramp (USA).
Copies of our artists’ books are available for a requested leaf through at the National Library of Australia, State Library Victoria, State Library of New South Wales, State Library of Queensland, Monash University Library, University of Melbourne Library, Melbourne Museum (Australia); and the University of West England (United Kingdom).