THREE ZINES, 2011

FOLDEDBOUNDZINES
Written By Gracia & Louise
 
 
 
 

1/ Gracia Haby
My dear, don’t worry my deer
September, 2011

Digital print zine
Edition of 60

 
 
 

A 10.5cm X 15cm, 36 page full-colour and B&W zine (with postcard collages front and back) with cream cover card and bullfinch pink spine, and a cardboard back. This zine includes eleven postcard collages from 2011 alongside their Dear You narrative.

Several of the postcard collages featured in this zine were also made into a loose series of limited edition prints in 2011.

 
 

Dear you,

Some sort of idyll, this is. Unseen in Switzerland. I look down at my feet, but they’re already camouflaged from own view. They’ve become enmeshed in the floral carpet on which I stand. Quite expect at any moment to soon become at one with the landscape in literal sense. This is not how I expected it would feel this sense of oneness with the earth. With petals for toenails, Mother Nature seized me for herself.

Yours blending in to the extreme,
X

 

Dear you,

I never knew I missed the smooth flat seas until they were a distant memory. Holding tight lest I slip off deck never to be sighted by those other than with scales and fishtail fans.

Eyes closed, storm ahead,
Where’s my sou’wester?
X

 
 

2/ Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
An even distribution of weight
September, 2011

Digital print zine
Edition of 75

Made especially for the IMPACT7 2011 Printmaking Conference

 
 
 

A 21cm X 30cm (folded to 7.5cm X 10.5cm in proportion), full-colour zine.

Copies of this zine were given to the first thirty people who attended the panel discussion, Reifying zines: a roundtable discussion of the relationship between ephemera and institutions, chaired by Anna Poletti at IMPACT7: Intersections & Counterpoints | International Multi-disciplinary Printmaking Conference hosted by Monash University (27th – 30th September, 2011). Copies were also available at the mini zine fair held at MUMA, and later through our online store.

(In addition to its IMPACT7 roots, this zine was made as Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet played. It, too, inspired the balance you see our characters attempting to hold. Having been fortunate enough to see Graeme Murphy’s Romeo & Juliet performed twice in the one month by The Australian Ballet, it is little wonder its inspiration carried over.)

 
 

The biennial IMPACT Conference originated at the Centre for Fine Print Research and was first hosted at the University of the West of England in 1999 in association with the Royal West of England Academy and the Southern Graphics Council USA.

IMPACT

 
 

JAB31

Collaboration, Cooperation, & Shared Goals
JAB—Journal of Artists’ Books
Spring 2012
Columbia College Chicago
Center for Book & Paper Arts

Artists’ Books in Australia
Sarah Bodman
p 16–23

My trip to Australia was made as part of the “Impact 7 Multi-disciplinary Printmaking Conference: Intersections & Counterpoints,” organised and hosted by Monash University, Australia. I spent a week with colleagues in Melbourne and then moved on to Queensland Collage of Art in Brisbane for sixteen days towork on Tim Mosely’s Codex Event 8, a collaborative UK/Australia artists’ books and pulp-printing project. Many of the presentations at Impact discussed artists’ books so it was an exciting prospectto travel to Australia where there is widespread (literally) activity across the field of the book arts.

....

It was also a treat to meet the collaborative Australian book artist duo Gracia & Louise (Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison) in Melbourne at the State Library and later at the zine fair at Impact. I have been collecting their books for a number of years now, so it was a great opportunity to meet them both in person and see their recent works. I asked them about themselves for this article, and here it is:

We make artists’ books, we make all sorts of things, and most usually we make things on paper. More often than not, we collaborate, working as team ... and have been doing so since 1999. One of us favors collage and the other favors watercolour, and working together comes easily.

We are besotted with paper for its adaptable, foldable, cut-able, concealable, revealing nature. From carefully-constructed limited edition artists’ books to prints, ines, postcard collages and other small projects, the animal features in our work made together and otherwise. It is prominent in its feature and easily detectable, the center of our paper stage. Hard to miss, over here and over there, the animal runs up hills, scales rooftops, and passes through a scene new or more familiar. It is present,always. For us, the animal is there to question our very behaviour, those moral principles one governs the self by, and to explore the relationship with the natural world.

The animal is our protagonist. It is the main character. Gliding through a scene it is too large to be contained within or perhaps too manmade to call home, that it has a tail or feathers or furred muzzle is not solely why its form appears. It is what the animal, or principal on aforementioned paper stage lit by moon or sun above, is doing that is where our interest lays. It is the physical act of looking for shelter or safe lodgings, running home or travelling far. It could be you. You, shown this time with a tail, but still very much you. They illustrate our traits, and our longings, those common to us all. Te animal also illustrates our relationship and fascination with the natural world.

We strive to create beautiful images, but beauty underpinned by a certain sadness, a lack of fit.


Sarah Bodman is a book artist and Senior Research Fellow for Artists’ Books at the Centre for Fine Print Research for Artists’ Books at the Centre for Fine Print Research at the University of the West of England, Bristol. She is the editor of The Artist’s Book Yearbook and The Blue Notebook Journal for Artists' Books

The Journal of Artists’ Books provides a platform for both theoretical and creative expression. As a forum for the study of artists’ books, JAB publishes critical and theoretical articles, reviews of artists’ books and exhibitions, and commentary on conferences and and other book art-related activities. JAB also regularly showcases creative work in the form of artists’ statements and artist-designed pages and covers

 
 

3/ Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
Small ephemeral atlas
September, 2011

Digital print zine
Edition of 25

Made especially for Sticky Institute

 
 
 

A 7cm X 5cm, 25 page full-colour and B&W zine with blue cover card held together by a small brass pin. Includes fragments from recent drawings by Louise and collages by Gracia alongside collected ephemera sourced far and wide and the unexpected. All twenty-five in this edition were roughly similar, wildly different, a curious meld, in short.

Part of TiNA (This is Not Art, Sydney) and Love Don’t Pay the Rent (Melbourne) for Sticky Institute.

 
 
 
Gracia & Louise

http://gracialouise.com
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