Artist books!

For the past few years, alongside my printmaking work, I have been exploring and making 'Artist Books'.

This has included small easily reproducible 'zines', to fine-art unique state artist books.

In 2013, I spent many months researching, experimenting, planning and producing the artist book 'The Graveyards of Consumption'.

Our consumerist lifestyle is structured in ways that make it very difficult for us to see its material and ethical consequences in a global context, and the impacts on people and places that are geographically and socio-culturally distant from us. One of these hidden aspects of such limited life span products is their ongoing need for delivery and removal. 

This artist book explores the journey of the container ship, just one of the many vehicles of transport involved in supplying these goods. I wanted to bring attention to this almost invisible system that since the 1960s has increasingly brought us almost everything we consume. 

When these container ships reach the end of their useful lifespan, they are often towed to and left on the coasts of some of the world’s poorest countries. 

This artwork was intended to link our purchase and discarding of consumer objects with the global implications of the life cycle of the container ship.

This artist book features the processes of etching, collograph and screen print. It uses 290gsm Coventry Rag paper and was bound with coptic stitch binding. It is an edition of 3.

It measures 17cm x 17cm x 2cm. It has 22 pages, many of which fold out and are cut into shapes resembling container ships and cities, as well as cut outs to reveal parts of the images on the following pages. 

Close up images of some of the individual etchings (which were exhibited in several 2014 exhibitions) can be seen at my earlier post here.

But here are some images of the book itself. As always, digital reproductions of artworks never do the art any justice. Indeed, I believe that artist books are meant to be handled, turned page by page, and pondered in one's own time.

In the coming days, I plan to enter this work into the 5th Sheffield International Artist's Book Prize. Unlike other exhibitions, this one allows visitors to handle the books. which is how I believe my artist books should be experienced.

If I am accepted, I will also be donating this artist book to their collection.

Winner of the Hobsons Bay Arts Society 5x7 Award!!

Yay!!!

It was a couple of weeks ago now, but here's me (looking suitably flushed with excitement) after winning first prize of $1000 in this local exhibition.

It was a great honour, especially as there were some amazing artworks in this show.

My winning work was a linocut onto some hand marbled paper (that I made earlier this year) with some ink drawing additions. It was titled 'The paths of our future...'. And it also found a lovely new home!

Thanks heaps to the Hobsons Bay Arts Society for all their hard work in organising such a great exhibition (about 200 artworks on the walls!!). 

Here's a slightly better image. In the rush of recent exhibitions, I forgot to document it more professionally, so this will have to do!

And here's my other 5x7 entry, 'For a long time it seemed to me...' which has also found a new home! Lucky me!

STOP PRESS! I got a spot in the Herald Sun.!!...well it was a few weeks ago now, but still...

Yay! I got a little feature in one of Melbourne's main newspapers, about my current street art exhibition.


http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/west/footscray-artist-documents-her-favourite-places-to-do-handstands-as-part-of-art-in-public-places/story-fngnvmj7-1227303566560

Larissa McFarlane performs a handstand on a Williamstown wall. Picture: David Smith.

A great place for a handstand. 

TOILET cubicles, building stairwells — when Larissa McFarlane feels the need to do a handstand she’ll turn upside down almost anywhere.

The Footscray artist taught herself handstands at 35 and has been doing at least one every day for the past 10 years.

But it’s not as though McFarlane one day felt the urge to flip herself over — the handstands have been an integral step on the road to recovery after a serious car accident.

McFarlane said she taught herself handstands with absolutely no childhood experience to draw on.

“I was always too scared,’’ she said.

“But I decided handstands were going to cure me so I practised and I practised because it felt good and I was living with chronic pain courtesy of the accident.”

Handstands have in turn inspired McFarlane’s artwork — photographs of the artist doing handstands have been pasted on walls in 16 places across South Kingsville for her “A Ritual of Handstands” exhibition.

An image of a woodcut of McFarlane doing a handstand can be seen on the wall of Snap Printing in Ferguson St, Williamstown. The original, and McFarlane’s other linographs and lithographs, are part of an exhibition on the walls of nearby Cocoa Latte Cafe.

LARISSA’S MORE UNIQUE HANDSTAND LOCATIONS: 

■ Building stairwells.

■ Lifts: “when no one else is in them”

■ Against trees: “when I can’t find a good wall”

■ Toilet cubicles in restaurants

■ Queen Victoria Market: “I usually pick places where there is no one to see but in really, really busy places, nobody really notices. People just keep walking.’’

The exhibition, part of Hobsons Bay Council’s Art in Public Spaces, runs throughout April.

I am pretty chuffed, (even if they did spell my name wrong)! My mother reckons that it is hysterical!!