The Archaic Stillness of the Book
Marian Crawford (Monash)
Abstract: Although the work of an artist, the artist book is often not immediately recognised or acknowledged as an artwork. However cleverly disguised as a novel, the often text-free and image-filled artist-made book navigates many fields: design and typography, bibliographic studies and librarianship; fine art, literature, and poetry.
To explore the slippery-ness of its character, this paper looks closely at artist books as case studies, and considers whether the form and content of these hand-printed artworks present an opportunity to test conventions of both the book and the portrait. Alison Alder’s 2015 Sleep of Doubt is populated by screen-printed portraits of contemporary Australian politicians, and Crawford’s book Picturing the Island 2016, (developed from research at State Library of Queensland) presents a portrait of Central Pacific islands. In making these works, Alder and Crawford have discovered that when a book is hand-made, the signifying power of this familiar form changes.
After establishing this possibility of new knowledge, that is particularly significant in the face of wearisome political cynicism and overabundance of images, this paper will then propose the artist book as a contemporary art object that presents possibilities for optimism, intimacy and specificity.
About: Marian Crawford is a visual artist whose artworks explore the relationships between the book, fine art printmaking processes, and the printed image in contemporary culture. Crawford is a senior lecturer in Fine Art at Monash University Art Design & Architecture, Melbourne, Australia, where she has taught for just over ten years.
In 2015/16 she was awarded the Siganto Fellowship at State Library of Queensland and has presented her creative works and writings publicly for over twenty years. Her works are held in numerous collections.
