Reunion of the Bower artists

 

This photo, an installation view of my miniature watercolours at the Johnston Collection museum in 2018, mysteriously appeared in my inbox yesterday morning. The photo was emailed back in January 2023. Heaven knows where it has been all this time. 

The watercolours were made for the four-person exhibition Patterns of Collecting - from the Bower at the Johnston Collection, which also featured the works and collections of Loris Button, Louise Saxton and Carole Wilson. The exhibition had previously been shown, in slightly different iterations, at Warrnambool Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Ballarat. 

The watercolour miniatures were included in Unsolved Histories, my recent solo exhibition at the Old Butchers Shop Gallery in Ballarat and most of them have found new homes. 

Meanwhile, on Thursday night at the Print Council of Australia Gallery in Melbourne, the Bower artists were reunited. We were there to celebrate the opening of Stuck: performing collage, an exhibition focusing on collage in printmaking, featuring works by Loris Button, Dianne Longley, Jackie Gorring, Diana Orinda Burns and Anne Langdon. And what a superb exhibition it is. 

Pictured below, L-R: Bower artists Carole Wilson, Louise Saxton, Loris Button and myself in front of a series of works by Loris Button based on the turban in one of m favourite paintings, Portrait of a Man (1433) by Jan van Eyck. (Photo credit: James Pasakos).

Stuck opened on June 18 and can be viewed at PCA Gallery, Studio 2 Guild, 152 Sturt St, Southbank, Melbourne, until July 5. Gallery hours: Tue -Fri, 10am-4pm.

Fellow Travellers

Anon, a linocut I made in 1998, has been curated into the exhibition Fellow Travellers at Latrobe Regional Gallery, Morwell, Vic.

Fellow Travellers: Prints from the LRG Collection

26 November 2022 – 12 February 2023
Gallery 5 & 6

 

Artists: Rashida Abdel-Aziz, Marita Anderson, Rosalind Atkins & Ex de Medici, Helen Burkhardt, Caroline Durre, Rodney Forbes, Sue Fraser, Kaye Green, Juli Haas, Euan Heng, Kees Hos, Carolyn Jones, Tim Jones, Helen Kavanagh, Kat Kershaw, Deborah Klein, Stewart MacFarlane, John Ryrie, Liz Tyler, Bonnie Quirk, Brian Robinson, Judy Watson, Yvonne Watson, Kate Zizys. Guest Curator: Jenny Peterson.

Local printmaking stalwart, Jenny Peterson has trawled through Latrobe Regional Gallery’s print collection to create a show looking at comradery and collaboration among mainly Gippsland artists.

- From LRG website.

Fellow Travellers for me also refers to the many printmakers in the contemporary Australian art scene. We tend to communicate and collaborate in our varied practices. In the teaching and learning space of art school and the community press environment, collaboration around ideas and development of print exchanges and projects can flourish.

Many of the prints in the LRG collection have been acquired from the Print Council of Australia through their annual commission program. Over the years several Gippsland artist prints were acquired through this process. 

- Excerpt from Guest Curator Jenny Peterson’s essay, Print Council of Australia online, 29 November 2022. The full essay is here: https://www.printcouncil.org.au/fellow-travellers/

In 2009, Anon was exhibited in …a thousand words at Tweed River Art Gallery. Curated by Susi Muddiman and Gayle McDermott, the exhibition comprised works selected from the archive of the Print Council of Australia. My Blog Post of February 20, 2009, …a thousand words at Tweed River Gallery, NSW, includes a short essay about Anon. You can read it HERE.

Anon is the second of my prints to be included in the LRG summer program. The other work, A Man, a Woman and a Duck, 1996, is part of In our own time, curated by Gabriella Duffy, also current to 12 February. (See previous post). 

Image top: Deborah Klein, Anon, 1998, two-colour linocut printed from three blocks on Japanese mending tissue stitched onto brown oriental paper, 57.5 x 38 cm. Ed. 55. Print Council of Australia Commission Print, 1998. Collection: Latrobe Regional Gallery, Vic. 

Coming soon: BOOKISH Artist Talk at Melbourne Athenaeum Library

As the day draws closer, here is a timely reminder of the artist talk Bronwyn Rees and I will present as part of BOOKISH, an exhibition of artist books curated by the Print Council of Australia and hosted by Melbourne Athenaeum Library. All of the books in this extensive show were created by PCA members. 

Our talk is next Wednesday, March 23, from 6 pm. Full details are at the bottom of this post. 

We will bring along examples of our own works and share some of the stories behind them. Among these will be Progeny, 2018, the one-of-a-kind artist book developed during my time as the library’s artist-in-residence for Melbourne Rare Book Week 2018. Its point of departure was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, which celebrated the 200th anniversary of its publication that year. 

Bronwyn and I will also compare and contrast the evolution of our practices during a time of almost relentless change, upheaval and uncertainty.

Using works from the exhibition as examples, we’ll discuss the myriad forms an artist book can take, why so many artists relish working within the confines of the form (or alternatively, choose to expand and reinvent it), the use or omission of text, and why artist books ultimately remain such an enduring visual art form. 

The talk and exhibition are held in conjunction with the 8th Melbourne Art Book Fair at the National Gallery of Victoria. 

The BOOKISH artist talk is free. Seats are filling fast, so booking is essential. 

Proudly presented by the Print Council of Australia and

Melbourne Athenaeum Library: 

Wednesday, March 23, 6 - 8 pm

BOOKISH - Artist Talks and Drinks

Speakers: Deborah Klein and Bronwyn Rees

Melbourne Athenaeum Library

Level 1

188 Collins Street

Melbourne 3000

Email: library@melbourneathenaeum.org.au.

Phone: (03) 9650 3100

BOOKISH runs from March 17 - 26.

Melbourne Athenaeum Library opening hours:

Tuesday 10 am - 6 pm

Wednesday 10 am - 8 pm

Thursday 10 am - 6 pm

Friday 10 am - 4 pm

Saturday 10 am - 2 pm

Pictured above: Progeny, 2018, unique artist book, pigmented drawing ink, gouache and hand stitching with cloth binding, 16.5 x 91 cm (open) followed by a progress view and detail of the completed work. 

More things BOOKISH

BOOKISH, a major exhibition of artist books by members of the Print Council of Australia opens at Melbourne Athenaeum Library on March 17. 

To mark the occasion, from 6pm on Wednesday March 23, the library will host an evening of artist’s talks and celebratory drinks. Invited speakers are Bronwyn Rees and myself. 

The talk is part of the 8th Melbourne Art Book Fair at the National Gallery of Victoria. Its a free event, but RSVPs are essential: 

9650 3100 or library@melbourneathenaeum.org.au.

Back in 2018, I was artist-in-residence at Melbourne Athenaeum Library during Melbourne Rare Book Week and am very much looking forward to returning, if only for an evening. 

Bronwyn and I will be veritable open books as we discuss the widely varied nature of artist books and the making thereof. My contribution will include a show and tell of the projects I worked on during my residency, together with a selection of lino blocks from Illustrated Women, a current artist book in progress. My unbound artist book, Leaves of Absence (2017), acquired by the library as part of my 2018 residency, will also be on display.

Photo 1, top: Lino block from Frankenstein’s Women, a project begun during my library residency; 

Photo 2, above: Pictured with my unbound artist book, Leaves of Absence at Melbourne Athenaeum Library in 2018. (Photo credit: Shane Jones);

Photo 3, below: Your invitation to BOOKISH artist talks and drinks.

For more about all things BOOKISH, scroll down to Blog Post Saturday March 5, or visit my book blog, Moth Woman Press, HERE. 

BOOKISH runs from March 17-19 and March 23-26 during library opening hours.

BOOKISH

 

From March 17 - 26,  Melbourne Athenaeum Library will present BOOKISH, an exhibition of artist books created by members of the Print Council of Australia. Included is my unique concertina book, Cat’s Cradle, 2019.

A collaboration with the Print Council of Australia, BOOKISH is affiliated with the 8th Melbourne Art Book Fair at the National Gallery of Victoria.

SAVE THE DATE

As part of BOOKISH, the library will also host an artist talk with former artist-in-residence Deborah Klein and printmaker Bronwyn Rees. Deborah and Bronwyn will speak about the art of making artist books on Wednesday 23rd March at 6pm. The event is FREE but RSVPs are required on 96503100 or library@melbourneathenaeum.org.au. 

- From the Melbourne Athenaeum Library website. 

If you’re free, we’d love you to join us.

The exhibition is open from March 17 - 19 and March 22 - 26. 

For further information, visit my book art blog, MOTH WOMAN PRESS.

Pictured top: Cat’s Cradle, 2019, one-of-a-kind concertina book. Pages: ink and gouache on Khadi paper. Covers: hand-painted and lettered in acrylic on MDF.

Pictured second: BOOKISH invitation featuring ‘Ascent ll’, 2020 (detail), artist book by Bridget Hillebrand.

BOOKISH

BOOKISH, the Print Council of Australia’s inaugural artist book exhibition, is now live. The online show features 94 works, including my one-of-a-kind concertina book, Cat’s Cradle, 2019. 

To see inside the book, visit Moth Woman Press HERE.

Due to the current outbreak of COVID-19 in NSW, the PCA is no longer able to exhibit BOOKISH at Sydney Contemporary Art Fair as originally planned, but hopes to hold an exhibition in Melbourne during October. The venue and dates will be announced shortly. 

BOOKISH celebrates 55 years of the Print Council of Australia. The link to the exhibition is HERE.

IMPRINT: Survey of the Print Council of Australia at Parliament House, Canberra

Pressed for Time, 2017, archival pigment print, 31.3 x 23.2 cm. Edition: 30.
2017 Print Council of Australia Member Print Commission. Printer: Luke Ingram. 

My archival pigment print Pressed for Time (2017) has been curated into a special exhibition at Parliament House, Canberra. IMPRINT: Survey of the Print Council of Australia comprises 58 prints selected from over 600 works in the PCA Member Print Commission archive.

The exhibition includes works by Noel Counihan, Barbara Hanrahan, David Rose, Ray Beattie, Bea Maddock, Earle Backen, Ruth Faerber, Hertha Kluge-Pott, Olga Sankey, Judy Watson, Janet Dawson, Mary MacQueen, Raymond Arnold, G.W. Bot, Yvonne Boag, James Taylor, John Coburn, Jenuarrie Warrie, Maria Kozic, Wilma Tabacco, Rick Amor, Treahna Hamm, Robert Jacks, Bruno Leti, John Olsen, Michael Kempson, Susan Pickering, Andrew Ngungarrayi Martin, Belinda Fox, Georgia Thorpe, Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, Gosia Wlodarczak, Rebecca Mayo, Janet Parker-Smith, Rona Green, Sophia Szilagyi, Glen Mackie, Tama Favell, Elizabeth Banfield, David Fairbairn, Graeme Drendel, Deanna Hitti, Sue Poggioli, Maria Orsto, Samuel Tupou, Pia Larsen, Deborah Klein and Cat Poljski. 

In September 2017, Andrew Stephens, editor of the Print Council of Australia's journal IMPRINT, interviewed me about the making and meaning of Pressed for Time. You can read it HERE.

For further information, go to the Print Council of Australia website HERE:

IMPRINT: Survey of the Print Council of Australia 

Exhibition Area 

Level 1

Parliament House 

Canberra, ACT.

Exhibition hours: 9 am - 5 pm daily until Sunday 12 May.

IMPRINT interview: PCA Print Commission 2017

At work on Moth Women Vigilantes Rogues Gallery zines in the Ballarat studio. Photo credit: Shane Jones

Andrew Stephens, Editor of the Print Council of Australia's quarterly journal IMPRINT, recently interviewed me about Pressed for Time, my 2017 PCA Print Commission work. A link to the interview (which is followed by some terrific printmaking-related articles, including interviews with fellow 2017 PCA Print Commission artists) is here: http://imprint.org.au/category/interviews/.

Pressed for Time, 2017, archival pigment print, 31.3 x 23.2 cm. Ed: 30.
Printer: Luke Ingram 

I've sometimes found that due to changes in website settings, links don't always work down the track, so the interview is also reproduced below.

Deborah Klein discusses her work selected in the 2017 PCA Print Commission

Q: What is your relationship to printmaking and how did you develop this interest?

A: Through the years my relationship to printmaking has shifted and changed. In the immediate post-art school period and for a long time afterwards, relief printmaking was my primary means of creative expression. For the last fifteen years or so, however, my work has come to be fairly evenly divided between printmaking, painting, drawing and, more recently, zines and artist books.

When I enrolled in art school in 1983, it was as a painting major. But almost from the start, I found myself drawn to printmaking and soon switched majors. There has always been a narrative element to my work that I sensed would be better suited to a more graphic medium. I was particularly attracted to the direct nature of single block linocuts. For many years I'd admired the woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein and the German Expressionists. An investigation of the prints of Australian modernist artist Margaret Preston and her contemporaries also fuelled my growing interest in the medium.

Q: How did you approach your submission for the PCA Print Commission 2017?

A: For the past two years I've been developing a body of work, collectively titled Leaves of Absence. It's my first foray into archival pigment prints. I'm entirely self-taught, with no previous experience with or technical knowledge of the medium. 

The first works in the series were made for what was supposedly a one-off project, but I found myself increasingly attracted to this completely new way of working, even as I was still feeling my way with it. In time, my confidence with and commitment to the medium grew and it has developed into a significant extension of my printmaking practice. 

My three previous works selected for the PCA print commission (the first dating from 1986, the year after I graduated from art school) have each represented key developmental stages in my imagery. So the time felt right to submit a work that reflected its newest direction. 

Q: What are some of the foundation ideas that have guided the creation of the visual content of the work you submitted?

A: For the past six years I've been dividing my time between Melbourne and the Victorian Goldfields city of Ballarat, primarily in the latter, where I have a house and studio. During that time, I've become increasingly interested in the history of the area and its surrounds. 

Pressed for Time is part of a body of work focusing on the absence of Chinese women from the goldfields during the Australian gold rush. The eucalyptus leaf in this work and all those in the series were gathered in the tiny Victorian Goldfields town of Newstead. The forest floor is still dotted with holes, the last traces of the 3000 Chinese miners who once lived and worked there. The miners' plight on the Goldfields is well documented, but almost nothing is known about the women who remained in China. The silhouettes hand-painted onto each leaf represent one of those unknown women. 

Q: How does it relate to your broader body of work?

A: Lost and hidden histories are dominant themes in my work. Doomed to anonymity, my characters are sometimes masked, or stand with their backs turned to the viewer. More recently, as in Pressed for Time, they appear in the guises of Shadow Women. Silhouetted figures first appeared in my work in 2013, most notably in Tall Tales, a series of one-of-a-kind vertical concertina artist books.

Q: What were some of the technical challenges involved?

A: At first everything about this body of work was challenging, as it was completely uncharted territory. From the day I gathered the first eucalyptus leaves in Newstead, I worked intuitively. I had no set guidelines or instructions to work from and had no idea if the images would actually work as prints.

In the past, I printed most of my linocuts myself. On occasion I've worked with some wonderful master printers, but in every case the image was already pretty well resolved. 

The digital prints were an entirely different matter. For a number of practical reasons, including necessary access to specialist equipment, I had no choice but to work with a printer, and in much closer proximity than I had in the past. I was already way out of my comfort zone and found the prospect incredibly daunting. I knew it was vital to find a printer who understood the ideas, aesthetic, and visual language of the work and wouldn't be judgemental about my lack of experience in this area. Through a fortuitous recommendation from a fellow printmaker, I found just that in Luke Ingram and his colleague, Daisy Watkins-Harvey, at Arten in Abbotsford. I trust their judgment and have learned a great deal from them. They encouraged my fledgling efforts from the start and on a number of occasions have helped me to further refine the imagery during the crucial proofing stage.

Q: What other projects are you working on? 

A: At present I'm working towards a solo show at Tacit Contemporary Art in Melbourne. Fallen Women, my first exhibition of archival pigment prints, will run from 29 November - 17 December 2017.

PCA Print Commission Launch

Before the week completely runs away from me (and it very nearly has) here are a handful of highlights from the lively launch of the Print Council of Australia's PCA Print Commission 2017 at Collins Place Gallery, Melbourne on Tuesday evening, August 8.

Directly below, five out of the ten Print Commission artists are pictured in front of their works. From left - right they are: myself, Diane Masters, Jacqueline Aust, TJ Bateson and Joel Wolter. 

This is followed by an installation shot of this year's commissioned prints, sans artists. For a clearer view of individual works and to match each print with its maker, go HERE.

It was good to see some familiar faces, including Melbourne-based author, Lucy Sussex, pictured below with my partner, Shane Jones.

Finally, I'm pictured with Sue Westwood, Business Manager of the historic Melbourne Atheneum Library, where my artist book, Leaves of Absence, will be launched later this year. (More about this in a future post). Sue's sister, Diane Masters (pictured top, second from left) is one of this year's print commission artists.

It was a memorable evening, and terrific to see so many people in attendance. The PCA Print Commission 2017 is certainly off to a great start!

The exhibition is current until August 18. For further details, scroll down to my blog post of August 8.

now and then - 50 Years of the PCA Print Commission

The past two years have seen a significant change of direction in my printmaking practice via an ongoing body of archival pigment prints collectively titled Leaves of Absence. 

I'm delighted to announce that Pressed for Time, a work from that series, is one of ten prints commissioned by the Print Council of Australia for the PCA Print Commission 2017.

There was an online launch of the commissioned prints early this morning. They will be unveiled in the flesh this evening between 5.30 - 7.30 in the exhibition now and then - 50 Years of the PCA Print Commission at Collins Place Gallery, Shop 19, Collins Place, 45 Collins Street, Melbourne.

For those who can't make it tonight, the gallery hours are Tuesday - Friday, 11 am - 5 pm. The exhibition runs until 18 August. (Full details are on the invitation above).

This is my fourth print commission for the PCA. The first, a large-scale linocut, was made in 1986, the year following my graduation from art school.

Below is a preview of this year's commissioned work, photographed recently in the interim between numbering, titling and signing the edition and hand delivering it to the Print Council of Australia.

Pressed for Time, 2017, archival pigment print, image size: 31.3 x 23.2 cm, paper size: 48.4 x 33 cm, edition: 30