SECRETS OF THE PHOTOCOPIER AND NEW WAVE
1/ Secrets of the Photocopier, a display of all zines to date, as part of Sticky Institute’s Festival of the Photocopier, 2008.
2/ The Centre for Fine Print Research Book Arts: New Wave: artists’ publishing in the 21st Century, at the School of Creative Arts, University of West England, Bristol, UK, 2009.
1/Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
Nineteen zines, gathered
2008
Nineteen zines from 2002 through to 2008
Two drawings, watercolour, pencil on Fabriano Artistico HP 640gsm
Twenty-one wooden animals, pen, acrylic on ply
Exhibited as part of
Secrets of the Photocopier
Monday 4th of February – Friday 29th of February, 2008
Platform Artists Group, Degraves Street Subway, Melbourne
As part of Sticky Institute’s Festival of the Photocopier, we displayed a gathering of all of our zines to date (save our first zine, Is there kunst in the house (2002), as we've but one copy between us). Against a watercoloured arctic landscape-cum-stage-set, twenty-one out-of-context animals, we fashioned from wood, dusted snow white and gave face with a felt-tip pen, pawed through copies of the following,
Everything between home & work (2002)
Looking out the window (2003)
Where does the musk rat keep his musk? (2003)
Omar & Olive — chinese whispers with other creatures they meet wandering through their dreams (2004)
Omar & Olive — what they’d really like in their friskies feast cat food (2004)
How to... (make a concertina, fold out book & a wrap around book) (2005)
How to... (plan for commercial printing and understand printing terminology & color concepts) (2005)
11.5 fossils (2006)
Geschlecht und Schoklade (2006)
How to... (spot a phoney fossil) (2006)
Footy Essentials (2006)
Postcards from... If we stand very still, no one will notice (2007)
How to... (Be a little more green) (2007)
What Do You Think? (2007)
Three in the Kitchen (2007)
Postcards from... A trapdoor in every room (2007)
Have Wheels, Will Go (2007)
Small Collection (2008)
Before it's too late (2008)
●
Secrets of the Photocopier
YOU, THE CONTEXTUAL VILLAINS, PAPER/CUTS, 7U?, BREAKDOWN PRESS, GRACIA HABY & LOUISE JENNISON, ALL THUMBS PRESS, DNA, IANTO WARE, WEB, THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MAVIS MCKENZIE, ERINSBOROUGH EXPLOITS
SECRETS OF THE PHOTOCOPIER
A GROUP EXHIBITION AND PART OF STICKY INSTITUTE’S FESTIVAL OF THE PHOTOCOPIER
MONDAY 4TH OF FEBRUARY – FRIDAY 29TH OF FEBRUARY, 2008
PLATFORM ARTISTS GROUP & STICKY INSTITUTE, DEGRAVES STREET SUBWAY, MELBOURNE
Zines are a low-budget, accessible ‘democracy of the multiple’ form of artistic and written expression, usually centred around photocopier technology as an easy and immediate form of reproduction, the zine then being freely distributed at little or no cost. Zines are often difficult to define and it is this difficulty of defining zines that contributes to its ever-changing dynamics and freedom that encourage experimental and innovative art forms.
Sticky Institute
Ravening/Ravelling/Revelling
Book Arts newsletter
No. 40, March/April 2008
UWE Bristol, School of Creative Arts, Department of Art and Design
Review by Jurate Sasnaitis
Secrets of the Photocopier, an exhibition at Platform Artists Group, as part of Festival of the Photocopier presented by Sticky Institute
Zines are often difficult to define and it is this difficulty of defining zines that contributes to its ever-changing dynamics and freedom that encourage experimentation and innovative art forms. — public service announcement by Sticky Institute
Does anyone still remember the Gestetner machine, a method of reproducing documents by stencil? Does anyone remember the drum and unstable blue ink of the mimeograph? Does anyone know that ‘photostat’ is not another word for photocopy? It's actually the original projection photocopying process invented in the 1900s. Gosh those were the days! Making multiples was not that easy: technology was neither accessible nor cheap. Now we have inexpensive, easily accessible copying. Moreover practically every home, business and institution has a printer attached to their computer. The world is the oyster of every bod inspired to self-publish a small circulation, non-commercial, minority interest zine.
ravening: [of a ferocious wild animal] extremely hungry and hunting for prey
On the other hand, practically every bod and her uncle with a computer attached to that printer has her own blog. So what’s the point, you may well ask, why bother? If blogging is replacing the zine, how is it that a zine exhibition in the Degraves St Subway can attract hundreds of punters, not merely passing on their way to catch a train but genuinely interested and intrigued? Easy! Because there is something about the tangible object, whether that's to do with ownership or tactile appreciation or the colour and texture and delight of many different ideas rubbing up against each
other, people love it. People need it...
ravelling: [noun rare] a tangle, a cluster, or knot
I love it! I walk wide-eyed with wonder by the stalls and exhibition windows of the launch of Festival of the Photocopier, pouncing occasionally on that particularly tasty miniature book or “monster in a box”. From a distance Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison’s fluorescent lit window is a blur of bluish-white; closer, a melange of white critters have escaped the confines of the arctic watercolour behind them and skitter across an icy ground strewn with at least 19 zines (hope I counted correctly), publications which prove that low tech does not equate with low quality.
Here it is possible to learn many things, from putting a publication together in How to... plan for commercial printing to the more esoteric archaeological pursuit of How to... spot a phoney fossil. Oh, and is that marsupial-rat-thingy (not good on animals, sorry) about to chew on Gracia’s collages in Postcards from... A trapdoor in everyroom? And is the lazy turtle about to get off on Have wheels, will go, the zine for those with major automobile lurve, or is turtle turned on by Footy Essentials, or frozen by the thought behind Louise’s Before it’s too late? So much to savour, not least of which a few recipes from Three in the Kitchen, a collaboration between Shari Altman, Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison.
revelling: engage in lively and noisy festivities, esp. those which involve drinking and dancing
People make beautiful things though they speak of the injustices and madness of the contemporary world. I wend my way through the crowds and attempt to find a common thread amidst the plethora of ideas and the range of print technology. After all, ‘photocopier’ is a bit of a misnomer when faced with the splendid production of Present History from The Contextual Villains, for which they won an Australian Desktop Magazine Award in the category of Best Design for Creative Print Media. What does emerge are notions of political vandalism, social satire, visual appropriation and the primary function of sharing a very particular enthusiasm, if not obsession. From All Thumbs Press you might get a pithy comment on cultural difference, hand printed with big fat stamps and illustrated with delicate pencil drawings. From DNA a sample of a real FANzine dedicated to punk and alternative music that goes back to 1979! Erinsborough Exploits speaks for itself, or rather, from the mouths of soap stars come philosophical musings that never graced the storyboards of prime time television.
The twelve windows of Secrets of the Photocopier reveal far more than what is implied by the title of this exhibition. It’s the secrets of the heart we find here; years of changing and challenging passions laid out for our amusement, and perhaps our edification.
2/Louise Jennison
Tweak, Tweaked, Tweet
2009
A 10 X 42cm, six-page concertina B&W zine with a string tie.
Australian birds drawn with pen and ink by Louise and featured in neat formation. Birds include the Grey Currawong, Willie Wagtail, and the Brown Cuckoo-dove.
Gracia Haby
Good evening, good evening. So nice of you to come all this way.
2008
A 15cm X 10.5cm, 32-page colour and B&W zine with a bright red cover card and cardboard back, with a glued spine.
Receive a little love with your cabbage roll; comb the lawns of Killarney in Ireland; and break a few roof tiles in Stockholm. A zine featuring original collage postcards and their imagined correspondence.
Exhibited as part of
The Centre for Fine Print Research Book Arts: New Wave: artists’ publishing in the 21st Century
School of Creative Arts, University of West England, Bristol, UK
Tuesday 15th of September – Saturday 19th of September, 2009
This exhibition forms part of a two-year AHRC funded research project which aims to extend and sustain critical debate of what constitutes an artist’s book in the 21st Century — in order to propose an inclusive structure for the academic study, artistic practice and historical appreciation of the artist’s book. New Wave is an exhibition demonstrating examples of concepts and formats of artists’ publishing. The exhibition is displayed over two rooms, a hands-on room of 133 artists’ books, and a reference book reading room of contextual publications, alongside which we are showing copies of altered Artist's Book Tree diagrams from our online artists’ books survey.
New Wave
Sarah Bodman / Tom Sowden
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