Tim Jones + Catherine Hammond

Summary: The website Find New Zealand Artists was launched in 2013 by project partners Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki along with seven other contributing libraries, it has become a standard reference source for biographical information about Aotearoa New Zealand artists. It is cited in other sources, is regularly updated, has embedded links to a range of other projects, and has been translated into te reo Māori. Created by art librarians primarily as an index to artist files held in New Zealand libraries, it was envisaged as a pointer to other sources of information and contains almost no primary research or visual material. The site itself is so simple that it costs practically nothing to run, and is found to be useful in ways unimagined in 2013. The tenth birthday of Find New Zealand Artists is a moment both to reflect on its success and to consider how it could be made better. How could it be integrated with other name authority schema? Or connected with collection or image databases? What other source material could it index? Could its scope be extended beyond visual artists to include musicians, dancers, architects or writers? Could its scope be extended geographically? How would any such developments be evaluated? Should a successful project be left alone, or are there opportunities waiting to be seized?

 In this presentation, Catherine Hammond and Tim Jones will consider some of these questions in detail.

BIO: Tim Jones is the librarian and archivist at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, the public art museum in Christchurch, New Zealand. He has been an active member of ARLIS-ANZ for over 20 years. He has presented at previous ARLIS-ANZ conferences, and elsewhere, usually on subjects related to managing information about art and artists in systematic and structured ways. He was a co-founder, with Catherine Hammond and others, of the website Find New Zealand Artists which he still jointly administers. He has overseen  the digitization of a large volume of New Zealand fine and applied art material and is passionate about making this material freely and widely available.

BIO:  Catherine Hammond has worked in leadership roles in the arts and cultural sector in Aotearoa New Zealand for over two decades. She is Director of Collections and Research at Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira and was formerly Hocken Librarian at the University of Otago, Head of Documentary Heritage at Auckland Museum, and Research Library Manager at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. She is a Trustee of the UNESCO NZ Memory of the World, and a former chair of the ARLIS/ANZ New Zealand Chapter. Catherine is a published writer, editor and curator, and has led the development of award-winning cultural heritage websites. Her research interests centre around Aotearoa New Zealand art histories, the relationship between contemporary art and archives, and the development of user-centred collection access for cultural heritage collections in both physical and online spaces.

Martin Shub

Summary: It seems that my digital publications have found a lovely umbrella term in “Being Seen”. My work publishing Art Biographies and Art Prizes websites and associated publications is about surfacing, collating and publishing information about contemporary Australian artists and art prizes. There is an undeniably strong relationship between these two knowledge domains. Selection in art prizes provides a pathway to identifying active and high-performing artists in a way that other group exhibitions don’t manage. Did you know that in 2023 the artist Virginia Keft was a finalist in at least 14 prizes? Despite this many people still aren’t aware of her work or that the artist Lauren Starr won the biggest art prize in Australia in 2022 - $150,000. When your clients are looking for topical, current biographical information about Australian artists you could direct them to these sites.

BIO: Publisher Martin Shub’s Discovery Media has been on the forefront of documenting Australian art and artists since the early 1990s, publishing the Australian Visual Artists Database (AVAD), which became a standard reference in State and university library collections. AVAD included the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Visual Artists Database (NATSIVAD), which has been documenting indigenous artists’ careers throughout Australia for 30 years. Riding the early digital wave, Art Right Now was the first Australian multimedia CD-ROM profiling contemporary Australian artists, followed by OzBiogs, a web-based subscription database of Australian artists. More recently, Discovery Media has been profiling and tracking art prizes across Australia through the popular Art Prizes Planner website and iPhone/Android apps.

Kêyeele Lawler-Dormer + Ben Ong 

Summary: The National Art Archive at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) holds the largest collection of artists' archives in Australia. Since 1955, it has collected material from artists, commercial galleries, individuals, and other organisations. This paper discusses the methodology and decision-making involved in a small team digitisation project and highlights the benefits of focusing on female representation in Art Archives.  Completed in June 2024, the Women Artists Archives Project was a collaborative initiative by the Archive and AGNSW’s conservation team to enhance the visibility of female artists within the Archive Collection. Made possible through the generous support of Sally White OAM through the Conservation Benefactors program. This project focused on conserving, rehousing, and digitising artist sketchbooks and issues of Undergrowth magazine created by women. Items were selected based on their visual impact, historical importance, relevance to the exhibition program, potential to boost research and public engagement.  

The project required creative thinking and the provision of innovative solutions such as: photography set ups, adapting open-source book cradles for digitisation, tracking workflows with excel, and optimising data ingestion into the collection management system. These solutions allowed for the team to successfully treat and digitise 550 high-priority items across six archives making them further accessible to the public.   

BIO: Kêyeele completed a Master of Cultural Material Conservation at the University of Melbourne majoring in Paper Conservation, progressing from a background in Fine Arts and Art History. Following a career in Arts Administration in small galleries in New Zealand, Kêyeele has spent the past eight years working as a Paper and Book conservator, both privately and in institutions across New South Wales and The National Archives UK. Kêyeele has most recently worked across exhibitions and digitisation projects at the Art Gallery of NSW, with a key focus on the AGNSW Library and the National Art Archives.  

BIO:Completing his Diploma of Photography in 2004 Ben has been working as a professional photographer full time since 2003. Initially establishing himself in Fine Art and Fashion, and later to settle as Head Technician under Warren Macris of High Res Digital Imaging for 14 years – widely regarded as Australia’s most recognised fine art reproduction and restoration house. With a specialisation in film drum scanning and fluid mounting as well as art reproduction, Ben has also taught Photoshop and Colour Management at UTS. He later would go on to help establish the setup of one of Sydney’s largest and last remaining film labs, before settling at AGNSW as a Digitisation Photographer. 

Simon Welsh

Workshop summary: Collage is made up of magazine and newspaper clippings, discarded books, packaging, coloured or handmade papers, portions of other artworks or texts, photographs and found objects. Perfect mediums when working in the library industry. In this Being Seen workshop we will explore contemporary collage styles and create unique self portrait pieces that represent your style . The classes will be lead by experienced collage artist and Waverley Librarian Simon Welsh, no experience is necessary.  Just bring you creativity. All collage materials are provided. 

BIO: Born in Sydney, Simon Welsh is a collage artist, graphic designer and librarian. Welsh explores the unlimited potential of the figurative genre, exploring shape, movement, gender and sexuality. Influenced by the Masters, sculpture and the Renaissance, he reinterprets traditional mediums through a modern queer lens or Queerlage. Welsh’s work is often exploratory and created from a wide range of materials, much of his work is by chance and play and allows the pieces to direct a new narrative. Simon’s work has been shown domestically and internationally, at the Kaos Int Festival of Collage, a finalist at Midsummer, Fisher’s Ghost, The Lake Mac, Gosford, Blacktown, BAS, and the Nillumbik and is a member of the Sydney Collage society. He has been teaching collage for 6 years now and has worked in the public library industry for 12 years.

Duncan McColl

Summary: “Show me again...” Preserving, rediscovering and reviving the almost forgotten. The Art Gallery of New South Wales is a project partner in the Archiving Australian Media Arts (AAMA), an Australian Research Council LIEF-funded initiative led by Swinburne University of Technology. The project is trialing the EaaSi (Emulation as a Service Infrastructure) platform, originally developed by Yale University, which allows access to digital resources through preserved software. The project focuses on stabilizing digital media artworks, providing emulated access for researchers, and exploring contemporary methods for exhibiting historical media artworks. As part of this project, the National Art Archive has selected the Mike Leggett "Burning the Interface" archive and the dLux Media Art archive as case studies. These archives feature a wide range of interactive media works stored on various outdated digital media carriers. This short presentation will showcase the EaaSi platform, demonstrating workflows and the emulation of digital interactive multimedia works from obsolete carriers.

BIO: Duncan is the Digital and Special Collections Archivist at the National Art Archive, Art Gallery of New South Wales. His career in the information profession began 15 years ago, a career change from a disability sector. Since then, Duncan has held various roles and contributed to numerous projects in the GLAMR sector. He has previously held role at National Archives of Australian (ACT) and the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies (AIATSIS). Duncan has a strong interest in both digital and physical collection management, as well as all aspects of data stewartship & curation, data governance, digital preservation, discovery & access.

Kerri Klumpp

Summary: Drawing Attention: Artists’ Books at Monash University Library. Special Collections libraries contain unique material, often not easily discoverable by search interfaces. This presentation will consider recent, current and future practices at Monash University Library Special Collections that aim to have our art related collections ‘seen’. It provides examples of how we have physically and digitally surfaced our art related collections for students and researchers. It also steps through the collaborative curation process for a forthcoming exhibition of artists’ books in 2025.

BIO: For the past 20+ years, I have worked across academic libraries, special collections and archives in Naarm/Melbourne and Meanjin/Brisbane. I am currently working at Monash University Library where you can find me accessioning, describing and preparing unpublished material in Special Collections for digitisation. My role also supports teaching and research initiatives by leading Object Based Learning sessions with items from Special Collections and co-curating exhibitions. Prior to this, I have worked at The University of Queensland Library, The Australian Broadcasting Corporation and The Victorian College of the Arts | University of Melbourne Library.

Monica Oppen

Summary: Making the private library public. Why collect? I ask this question and wonder if the reason I collect books by artists is for the same reasons that others might collect them. I don’t suppose I will ever know the answer! I could keep the books all to myself but I decided to make my private collection public. This decision has lead me to becoming an accidental librarian. In this short presentation I will delve into the rationale behind and the process and benefits of making my private collection of artist’s books open to the public. I will cover the haphazard beginnings of my collecting, why I began to collect these particular books, the growth of the collection and the need to catalogue the books and as well as set boundaries and limits to which books I collect. I will also touch on storage of the books, the library rooms and designing the website. This presentation will be illustrated with images of the space, as well as a diverse selection of books from the collection showing the breadth and uniqueness of this genre of books.

BIO: Monica Oppen is a practicing artist whose practice focuses on the book and printmaking media. She began making books in the mid 1980s as part of a TAFE certificate course (East Sydney Technical College) and the following bachelors degree in the visual arts (City Art Institute). She learned hand binding and worked part-time as a binder in Sydney, NSW Australia for several years. She collected the first books by artists at this time. By the mid 2000s she began to catalogue the growing collection. In 2007 she established the Library for the Artist Book (Bibliotheca Librorum apud Articficem) which includes a purpose built website. Since seriously committing to collecting she has delved into the genre internationally and historically. The Bibliotheca is the largest private collection in Australia. Engagement with collecting has exposed her to the huge range of work in the field.

Lea Simpson

Summary: NAS Library Artists Book Annual: making student work visible. In 2023 the National Art School Library launched the NAS Library Artists’ Book Annual (NASLABA), an acquisitive prize and exhibition for students across all disciplines. Curated by Printmaking and Drawing academics, Library staff and a guest judge each year, the NASLABA meaningfully contributes to collection development of an important teaching collection in the NAS Library, while simultaneously offering visibility and professional development to our student artists.

Artists’ books have long been included in requisite NAS courses in both Printmaking and Drawing. In 2022 NAS Library began an active (if modestly funded) collecting focus on artists’ books to support these units. This was coupled with direct engagement with the Drawing and Print Departments, with the Library hosting dozens of class groups for exploratory and object-based sessions with the collection. The NASLABA has concreted a strong link between this curricular engagement and our parallel collection development and programming in this arena. The NASLABA exhibition is held in the Library Stairwell Gallery, establishing a rare interdepartmental exhibition available to all stages of learning at NAS. This exhibition is held during both Grad and Post Grad exhibitions, drawing attention to our artists’ book artists - and the Library’s collections and programming - during our highest visitation period of the year.

BIO: Lea Simpson has worked in academic arts libraries and specialist visual collections both in Australia and abroad for over 20 years. She loves it. Lea is currently the Head Librarian of the National Art School Library, and Secretary of the ARLIS/ANZ National Executive. She has a Bachelor of Art Theory (University of New South Wales/UNSW) and a Master of Library and Information Science (University of California/UCLA)

Louise Anemaat

Summary: Collections and Memory: The Dunera collections at the State Library of NSW. The State Library’s current exhibition, Dunera. Stories of internment, tells the story of a little-known chapter in Australia history through the moving artworks created by those who lived through it. This paper considers the question of forced displacement through an extensive display of artwork produced in Australia’s internment camps during World War II. It considers the role of collecting institutions in safeguarding memories that make up identity; the risks in selecting memories deemed worthy of preservation; and the role of collecting institutions in recording, exhibiting and validating memories and why that remains so important in contemporary Australia.

BIO: Louise Anemaat is Executive Director, Library Services & Dixson Librarian, at the State Library of NSW. She is responsible for teams delivering core library activities across the collection life cycle for physical and digital collections including collection development; cataloguing, processing and metadata standards; reading room and reference services, interlibrary loan and document delivery; conservation and preservation activities; and curatorial activities. She is also Lead Curator of the Library’s current exhibition, Dunera. Stories of Internment.

Eric Riddler

Summary: Analogue ways of seeing: Revisiting the age of the lecture slide. In the age of the PowerPoint presentation, shared to screen during a Zoom meeting, the 35mm lecture slide may seem to be a quaint relic of a past age. Yet, as a record of past educational practice, the lecture slide stands as a monument to the continuing importance of visual communication, especially in the field of art history and practice. The National Art Archive collection provides unique insights into the processes behind the creation of educational slide kits, while the Art Gallery of New South Wales Julia Davis Slide Library collection reveals an eclectic approach to art education, going back to the 1940s, which, along with other sources, prove that opportunities still exist for the use of historic educational material.

BIO: Eric Riddler is an art historian and researcher who is the Visual Resources Librarian at the Art Gallery of New South Wales National Art Archive. He has worked on a number of exhibitions, publications and research projects about Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand artists, especially those working in the mid twentieth century.