Artist's Book Yearbook 2003-2005 - Book Arts - University of the ...

other artists have used the book format in
relation to other notions of exile and its
accompanying experiences of dislocation and
pain. Page by crackling page Gail Haffern’s
The Book of Exile investigates connections
between the narratives of loss and of quest of
the tribes of Israel, in dialogue with quotations
from feminist texts on identity and absence. 11
The surface of her Mappa Exsilium, with its
usage of Biblical exile narratives, is formed by
curling, turning, persimmon-scented pages,
metaphors of irrevocable shifts in time and
place. Like Hastings-McFall’s work, this may not
be an artist’s book in the sense of being able to
leaf through it, but nevertheless a work
thoroughly informed by the book.
Mappa Exsilium Gail Haffern (persimmon paper, mixed
media) private collection, Auckland 1992
Other New Zealand artists have investigated
other possibilities of an architecture of the
book: Lesley Kaiser has made superbly
constructed kinetic, revolving books. Her
Voyage into Matter, Four Mylar and Mirror Books,
1990, allied scientific theory and the naming of
quarks with impeccably intricate engineering
(see image on page 16), while a number of
artists, Haffern, Violet Faigan, Patrick Pound
among them, have produced complex largescale
book-related installations.
Work in artist’s book-related format can be
seamlessly integrated with other aspects of
artists’ work. A ‘centre of artistic production’
known by various names: et al, Lillian Budd,
Popular Productions, P. Mule, J. (Arthur) Craig
and Sons, (among them), have made films,
designed billboards, inscribed texts on blinds,
displayed altered, unopenable books as part of
installations, made one-off and multiple artists’
books, painted a book-like daybed opening to
reveal maggots, title Selected Writings, (pre-
19
dating a certain Bed), arranged rooms of wonky
tables, made catalogues which double as
‘artists’ books’ complete with fishy interviews
with the artist…and produced an almost straight
catalogue for the wonky table exhibition,
except for that scungy, masking tape binding,
the one effectively perverse sign of the artist’s
hand. 12
Selected Writings Br-mf and P. Mule, exhibited in
Gaining Interest, Artspace, Auckland, 2001
The addition gives each copy the oxymoronic
state of being at the same time multiple and
unique. These artists can ‘tamper’ with earlier
works – intervene and alter – as part of their
practice, something of a challenge to librarians,
booksellers and collectors. But a not
inappropriate act, perhaps, in relation to the
arts of the book. For books of course have
attracted numerous interventionist acts.
Arguments for immortality, et al, catalogue cover design for
the exhibition abnormal mass delusions? Govett-Brewster Art
Gallery, New Plymouth, 2003
The catalogue cover (shown above) for an
upcoming major survey exhibition by these
artists may well not be quite as it is now at the
time of printing next week, and as it will appear