Filed under: 2011 made in, book binding, printmaking | Tags: artist book, landscape, laser engraving, lino cut, relief printing
This book has been completed thanks to the kind assistance of my father Denis Hughes of MyChoice laser engraving. I have had this book in the works for too long now, it has finally been pulled together with stitching and is complete. The images are relief prints from laser engraved lino blocks with Australian red ochre pigment coating the inside of each folded page. The pages are bound up with engraved kangaroo leather recalling a scorched aerial view of the landscape contained within.
Filed under: exhibition | Tags: artist book, censorship, dh lawrence, embroidery, etching, exhibition, feminism, library
A catalog for the exhibition Banned Books in Australia at the Baillieu Library has been released and a second edition with extra academic papers is on its way. Filled with essays by curators David Bennett, Jenny Lee and Richard Pennell on the history and status of censorship in Australia. It also contains my two works included in the show. The show is nearing it’s close and will only be open till Monday. Banned Books details.
The Lady’s Garden
Through the dichotomy of decorative and sublime responses to the landscape notions of constructed femininity as a means of control and censorship are investigated in these books. D.H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterly’s lover has been used to set the framework of the garden to uncover how certain views or vistas are deemed unsafe needing categorisation and control for safe consumption, with true nature suppressed bellow. Informed by a history of female amateur artists and the controls exerted on them, this work plays with form and style to draw together histories of art, censorship, and female repression.
I will be having an exhibition at BSG entitled Some Little Success. Running from the 13th to the 26th of August. More details to come as the date approaches.
Filed under: 2010, made in, book binding, printmaking | Tags: artist book, embroidery, lino cut, relief print
A foreboding Mordialloc skyline, stark windblown trees, a giant sky of clouds, hemmed in by wire, mesh, fenced barricades.
Filed under: book binding, printmaking | Tags: artist book, embroidery, lino cut, relief printing
New technology to mimic the old. Printing experiments have been a success with laser engraved and hand cut relief prints applied in layers. Today the parts will be pulled together into their final form encased in an embroidered map much darker than any other I’ve done.
The beginnings of another work, the lovely Kate (not me, another lovely Kate) returned from Vietnam with an embroidery for me. Transforming it into a book cover I am still uncomfortable with the appropriation of an unknown other’s work. As yet undecided on the contents I only know that I want to contextualise it with the book begun in Amsterdam focused on the sea, trade and colonisation.
Filed under: 2010, made in, book binding, craft, printmaking | Tags: artist book, embroidery, etching
The second copy of my embroidery and etching book The Lady’s Garden. These two books were created for the exhibition Banned Books at the Baillieu Library, details here. I’m in some good company, Eyewitness by Theo Strasser and Peter Lyssiotis is something else.
Filed under: 2010, made in, book binding, craft, printmaking | Tags: artist book, botanical, embroidery, etching, illustration
The results of backyard etching and a long day printing. This book is one of a pair to be shown as part of a group show in a few weeks. Examining definitions of femininity and how these have influenced the censoring of information for the protection of women’s delicate sensibilities. The imagerey is specifically in response to the garden imagery of DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover.
Filed under: 2010, made in, book binding, drawing | Tags: artist book, colour pencil
Some hurried shots of the book I completed last week. Today I’m installing my show Delicate Territories at the Baillieu Library. It will be on till the end of May. I will hopefully get some nice shots of my works in their fancy professional display cases.
Here is a copper frog for no real reason.
Filed under: book binding, craft, drawing | Tags: artist book, drawing, graphite
I sincerely regret that I never finished this book. It’s pale blue cover bisected by an inky line charms me. Examining the horizon through wahat is above and below, the cover is the only thing that recalls a vista. After drawing the first page I left the others blank seeking inspiration elsewhere. Blank pages remain, traces of guiding lines across their surface, squares drawn up never to be filled. I wish it were complete but my drawing has progressed so far that I would have to begin the first two again should I continue it. They are less than my ability now but I can’t bring myself to replace or dispose of them. So the book remains undone.
Looking down from above, something begins to take form.
Filed under: book binding, craft, surrounds | Tags: artist book, book binding, embroidery
I’ve been pottering along working on embroideries. A slow process with limited moments of revelation and excitement but sustained pleasure and growth. Today I finished this new book cover which will soon (don’t ask me to define soon) be bursting with drawings that will spill out of the covers.
I’ve begun work on a new very special book cover. To simplify the process and avoid mistakes I’ve broken the design into eighths. Over 8,000 stitches will be sewn before it is complete but I already see it all before me.
Expect some posts over the next week that look at some older books I’ve made both complete and incomplete.
And apparently I’m not the only person who thinks textiles and book covers make a perfect pair.
