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I wanted to kill my Chimpmail account, because I never used it. It seemed to be just another chore. What to do instead? Everyone kept saying 'Go to Substack' and it really did seem like a new exciting thing that fit the bill. So I went to Substack, told my Chimpmail subscribers (which was the first email I'd sent for ages) to find me there, and then waited a week and killed the Chimpmail account. This is what I put in that first Substack:  I suddenly realised that I invited my Mail Chimps to join me here without anything to offer you. Howdy! I’m hoping to get my blogging head back into play so that participating is more interesting than a mere newsletter subscription :) Here’s an image from my current exhibition with poet Melinda Smith (Corridors of Power,  M16 Artspace in Canberra showing until 26 October). It’s a photo of the MV TAMPA, the ship that rescued asylum seekers from their sunken boat in 2001 and then sat anchored off Christmas Island until the Howard governme...
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Recent posts

Care in the context of the artist book

When Craft ACT puts on its annual member's show, the exhibiting members are asked to contribute in some way: help with bump in or bump out, or give a public talk. This has been an insanely busy year for me, so as much as I enjoy a good old 'patch & paint' session, I put my hand up for a floor-talk. The theme of this year's exhibition is CARE , and we were asked to consider how this relates to our work.  I've had no access to a studio for most of this year, so I entered a book that I printed last year for BOOK ART OBJECT, called L OO P . (I did get a chance to print two things this year before the lockdown and subsequent closure of the art school for repairs, but one was a personal work for a retiring friend and the other hasn't been shown in the exhibition it was made for).  Here is my talk:  Floor talk, Craft ACT, 28 November 2020 I don’t know how you can be any kind of creative maker without a sense of care, and particularly --  unless you’re a purely di...
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Own goal: The Pillowbooks

Sometimes I feel like thinking about old work, the work that hasn't made it onto my current website .* So occasionally I'm going to revisit things as a little series I'm calling Own Goal . What follows is from 2009, edited from the original in my first &Duck blog.  The Pillowbooks is a two-object artist's book comprising a complementary pair of concertina folds. It was made for my exhibition Pressings: Recycled Bookwork (Megalo Print Studio + Gallery, 2009 ) , and sat so quietly in the show that I don't think many people noticed it. The rationale for this exhibition was that the works in it were made from the remnants of other work; I used altered commercial books alongside pieces created from larger/more formal book projects that I'd worked on over the years. When I produced  Transmigration , a fine press book of poems by Nan McDonald with drawings by Jan Brown, I printed the edition on paper called BFK Rives Grey, which is a lovely eucalypt grey-green col...
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Quiet aloneness & ecstatic solitude

This long post is a love letter to Rebecca Solnit. I love all of her writing, but A Field Guide to Getting Lost (Penguin, 2005) has been -- and I'm aware of the irony-- a wayfinder for me. Particularly the introductory essay to the book, 'Open Door' [1-25]. 1. Quiet aloneness Lockdown, for me, was never 'locked away'. I have enjoyed the break from real-life social activity, which, I must admit, stresses me quite a bit. If you have never worked out that I'm a social introvert, this is the proof. At the beginning, my night walks were born of frustration . Like many others, I was sitting for long hours at my desk, and needing more than just standing to cook elaborate meals (I did plenty of that). Living with someone that I'd only just met before lockdown was stressful too. So I just needed to get out into the evening, into the fresh air. I invested in some tracksuit bottoms so that I'd pass for someone trying to exercise, when actually all I wanted to find...
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Gone today, hair tomorrow

Yesterday, my iso-beard felt normal. It wasn't itching, or catching on my scarf, it was just... there. So I called it: this is the day it has to go .  When I started , this is what I asked myself:  I'm so curious. Can I stand it? This might be my only chance to see what shape my chin-line is: am I full and shaggy or scrappy and wispy? There's so much beard action out there, shall I take this on as a feminist body-image art project or just a chance to give up my last act of conscientious grooming? I thought about this a lot. I'm not a very hairy person, and the stuff I do have is like baby-hair: soft and fine. So scrappy and wispy was the bet.  Actually, it surprised me. There were two distinct patches on either side of my chin that grew sort of coarse, curly and thick --  not total coverage like a man's beard, but distinctly beard-like, more so than the bum-fluff my son got at puberty. The hairs were annoying, and itchy, and I stroked them a lot as if to keep them c...
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Small Collects: Artists Make Books

Small Collects is what I once wrote on a box of stuff that had either been sent to me over the years or I'd found or bought on travels. This is a subset of infrequent posts that feature my personal collection of ephemera and creative publishing outputs. I'm so excited. A desultory search on AbeBooks for something (I can't even remember what) a few weeks ago, dredged up a catalogue that I may, I thought, or may not have packed in a box somewhere, but it's cheap enough that I should buy it and if it is a double, I can pass it on.  Well. It arrived at my door in the brave-new-world way: a doorbell ring, the parcel dumped on the doorstep and the postie buggering off as fast as possible to avoid contact. A slim but quite large envelope, containing this beauty:  I have seen it before, in my art school's library, but I haven't looked at it since I was a student falling in love with artist books. It's a catalogue for a travelling exhibition in Australia from 1991. ...
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Small collects: Know your ABCs

Small Collects is what I once wrote on a box of stuff that had either been sent to me over the years or I'd found or bought on travels. This is a subset of infrequent posts that feature my personal collection of ephemera and creative publishing outputs. Know your ABCs: Another Booklyn Chapbook series Sometimes, as I said a few posts ago, small collects just arrive. When I moved into Flat Life, I downsized and packed things up, and I had a few lovely months of being a minimalist, but stuff accumulates, doesn't it? Especially when you have a pronounced fondness for materiality, like I do. I don't collect clothes, or knick-knacks, I just end up with books and printed things and small non-commercial oddments that catch my eye. If someone likes something as much as I do, I'll sometimes give it to them, trying to practice non-attachment, but I'll often miss keenly the little things that wear out and break: an excellent pencil, a favourite soup spoon. Here's a ...
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