Artists’ Books: Objects of Visible and Invisible Realms
Dr. Paul Uhlmann (ECU)
Abstract: “Where are we to put the limit between body and world, since the world is flesh?” - Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This paper is a meditation on the position that select artists’ books are material objects existing as unique vehicles of literature simultaneously occupying visible and invisible realms. The books of interest are embodied creations. The pages are the stuff of matter, of oil, pigment, and paper, but are also always objects of the body; the purpose is to affect change, to convey sensations and feelings to others. This is a mysterious process of art enabling subtle and complex forms of communication. The paper will consider this process through the lens of Merleau-Ponty whose phenomenological approach considered the world to be constituted of ‘flesh’.
At a fundamental level, there is an intertwining between the flesh of the world and the flesh of the human body and it is this insight into perception that will focus the concerns of this paper. I will reference artist’s books from my own imprint of trembling hands as well as works from other artists and in this manner, I aim to illuminate how these material objects occupy visible and invisible realms which must be experienced as tactile objects.
About: Dr Paul Uhlmann is a Fremantle based artist whose work strives to question and translate philosophies of impermanence. He works experimentally across the mediums of painting, printmaking, drawing, and artists’ books – at times employing the mechanics of simple cameras obscura. He is interested in how the materiality of the mediums employed can give rise to form and how this, in turn, informs the imagination.
Paul studied art in Australia and Europe on two year-long scholarships; DAAD in Germany (1986-87) and Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship in Holland (1994-95). In 2012 he was awarded a practice-led research PhD at RMIT. He has lectured for over twenty years at various institutions including Australian National University, Monash University and Edith Cowan University. He is the coordinator of the Visual Arts Course and co-founder of fold (Artists Books + Print Editions), a small press of experimental printmaking, at Edith Cowan University. He foundered his own imprint, trembling hands, for making his unique and limited-edition books in 1986.
He has exhibited nationally and internationally since 1983 and his work is held in many prominent collections. He has published papers on the creative process and embodiment and articles in Imprint and Artlink magazine.