Choose Your Own Adventure
9 September – 30 October 2016
Shaun Tan: The Art of Story - Discovering the Lost Thing - Book to Film
Kylie Stillman: Local Branch
Artist’s books from the Manly Library collection
Our Lost Things - work by Year 5 pupils from Kurrajong Public School.
Books are usually thought of as gateways to other worlds. Artists from different disciplines often use the book as a creative medium. Through curiosity and innovation they take the traditional art form of the book and transform it in their own way! In Choose Your Own Adventure we bring together a diverse group of artists, linked by books to investigate the medium and meaning of contemporary book arts from the book as object, as media, and as a site of resistance.
In Choose Your Own Adventure (from the best-selling interactive book series) we bring together a diverse group of artists, who are linked by books to investigate the medium and meaning of book arts from the book as object, as media, and as a site of resistance.
As book artists, their methods encompass a broad spectrum of techniques, styles and practices ranging from traditional to experimental to sculptural. Pages might be hand-drawn, printed traditionally or constructed from repurposed or upcycled materials. Forms range from scroll to codex to paper engineering, from painterly to typographic. The Artist’s book has emerged as an energetic contemporary art form in recent years.
In The Shaun Tan: The Art Story - Discovering the Lost Thing - Book to Film, we enjoy the journey and process of how a well-loved children’s book The Lost thing was created as well as experiencing the challenge of adapting it for the big screen. Visitors will see the work behind the work including the original painted and collaged illustrations for the book, the character sketches, storyboards and the final short animation.
In the lead up to the exhibition the Gallery developed an outreach program and conducted a workshop with Kurrajong Public School. In this workshop the students responded to Tan's book and film of The Lost Thing and spent an imaginative morning guided by an artist/educator in creating their own 'lost thing' first as a drawing, then bringing their creation 'to life' in colourful polymer clay. resulting in the exhibition Our Lost Things.
Artist Kylie Stillman was commissioned to create an installation for the exhibition using weeded books from the Hawkesbury Library Service. Her work called ‘Local branch’ features over 500 books that have been carved, examining the idea of the linked lifecycle of trees and books. Since her time as a student Stillman has enjoyed the challenge of finding materials and pigments from the ‘real world’ to create an artwork. Best known for her book sculptures and woodcarvings, Stillman uses scalpel blades, jigsaws, sewing materials and drills to alter objects and create negative spaces that depict ‘signs of life’. Her inventive artworks draw from both modern art and craft traditions to transform ordinary materials into works of art. The artist says ‘it’s my own form of alchemy – taking something very common and then giving it nobility’.
The program also includes a beautiful selection of artists' books from the Manly Library collection that reflect the long tradition of enquiry, curiosity and innovation that books signify when placed in the hands of artists. Artists’ books are naturals for libraries, stressing the creative potential of the book medium and restating the long standing relationship between the book and the library. The biennial Artists' Book Award has provided Manly Library with the opportunity to develop an artists’ book collection and in so doing also contributes to the development and awareness of artists’ books as an art form. The collection began in 2011 with the acquisitions from the inaugural Artists' Book Award. Entries were received from around the world, marking this as a globally recognized event.
The exhibition is an opportunity to see the often secreted world of book artists. Their methods encompass a broad spectrum of techniques, styles and practices ranging from traditional to experimental to sculptural. Pages might be hand-drawn, printed traditionally or constructed from repurposed or upcycled materials. Forms range from scroll to codex to paper engineering, from painterly to typographic. The Artists' book has emerged as an energetic contemporary art form over the last forty years.
Shaun Tan: The Art of Story - Discovering the Lost Thing - Book to Film is a Books Illustrated Gallery travelling exhibition.
Our Lost Things - work by Year 5 pupils from Kurrajong Public School, Kylie Stillman: Local Branch and Artist’s books from the Manly Library collection are Hawkesbury Regional Gallery programs.
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