DIP AND BOB
Underwater, kind of. Yes. Dive in.
Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
Dip and bob
2021
From a 620cm long digital collage, a 72 page colour digital print artists’ book, on 150gsm Impact 100% Recycled Uncoated, 105mm x 148mm, with original watercolour cover on Fabriano Artistico 300gsm traditional white hot-press paper
Printed by Documents on Call
Bound by Louise Jennison
Edition of 50
The pool was too busy. A school carnival was in splash. No swim, today. So a dip through a drawing was needed.
Submerge the body in a kelp forest of paper pieces. Dream of the sea. Of an octopus you met in a documentary who, like everyone you know, tugged at the heart strings. Streaming to swimming, a Hobbs, Brockunier and Company vase ca. 1886 is now a part of my shell armour. Or is that lose the ‘r’ amour.
Underwater, kind of. Yes. Dive in.
Don’t forget to hold your breath.
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Earlier, we’d received the Soul of an Octopus, in book form, a present from a friend. It was meant to be. Now from a Bottle with a Globular Body, a new sea form grew.
Search the collection. Sift the collection. “Water”, Return key.
Invert a forest. A daguerreotype of poplars stretching across the plate could be bands of seaweed.
A Chimú collar, twelfth–fourteenth century, with a fringe of Spondylus shells for a jellyfish. (“In Inca times, Spondylus shells, known as mullu in Quechua (the modern descendant of the language of the Incas), were called the ‘daughters of the sea, the mother of all waters,’ and were closely linked to ideas of water, fertility, and abundance” (Joanne Pillsbury, ‘The Thorny Oyster and the Origins of Empire: Implications of Recently Uncovered Spondylus Imagery from Chan Chan, Peru’, Latin American Antiquity 7, no. 4 (1996), pp. 313–340.).
A crab from a trade card. Not for the skillet. Zoom in, Moonfish. The Young Saint John the Baptist hair tendrils ca. 1480–82, repurposed.
Papyrus fragment with lines from Homer’s Odyssey, ca. 285–250 B.C., for kelp bands.
Finally, from plates made by placing wet algae onto light-sensitized paper exposed to sunlight, “flowers of the sea” from Anna Atkins (1799–1871) from British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions.
Thanks, once more, to the digital collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The New York Public Library, Rijksmuseum, State Library of New South Wales, and State Library Victoria.
Our only chance of a healthy, safe, joyous, and sustainable future is to return to being reciprocal with nature so nature can continue to look after us.
Stand up and fight for the oceans and the waterways.
Editions of Dip and Bob have been acquired by the National Library of Australia, State Library of New South Wales, State Library of Queensland, State Library Victoria, University of Melbourne’s Baillieu Library, and Monash University Library.
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RELATED LINKS,
DIP AND BOB LIVE BINDING (IGTV)
ONLINE EVENT: LIVE BINDING OF DIP AND BOB
NGV ART BOOK FAIR 2021
LIVE IN-STUDIO VISIT, IN CONVERSATION WITH JESS COLE, ASSISTANT CURATOR, PRINTS AND DRAWINGS, AT NGV
KELP COMPLETE!
RELATED POSTS,
DIP AND BOB
LEAF THROUGH
Dip and bob live bookbinding
Presented as part of the 2021 NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair
On our Instagram LIVE
@gracialouise
Sunday 28th of March, 2021
noon – 2pm AEDT
With our stall at the NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair being a virtual one this year, and because we did not want to miss the joy of showing you our artists’ books and zines in person, live screen to chat bubble, we bound editions of Dip and bob live on our instagram, @gracialouise, on the last day of the fair. No Great Hall for a backdrop, but you can watch us fold and glue spines, score watercolours, and fold kelp-band covers in our version of ‘live tabling’.
Thank-you for joining our first ever bookbinding on Instagram LIVE session. Our sped-up Fredrick Wiseman; our Ex Libris film; our lounge room for the purposes of internet and flexibility. It seems unlikely we proved bookbinding to be a spectator sport, but that’s more than okay. Thank-you all so very much for joining us on our Sunday afternoon. We loved being Littles residing within your phone. We loved sharing this with you all, this beautiful experiment. Thank-you.
Online event: Live Binding of Dip and bob (NGV)
Online, rewound (IGTV)
NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair
We launched Dip and bob from our virtual stall at the 2021 NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair.
Individual editions of Dip and bob are available exclusively through our online store.
Editions of Dip and bob have been acquired by Monash University Library, National Library of Australia, State Library of NSW, State Library of Queensland, State Library Victoria, and University of Melbourne’s Baillieu Library.
Printed on Impact 100% Recycled Uncoated stock. Made with 100% post-consumer waste, Impact 100% Recycled Uncoated is also made Carbon Neutral.
