I am delighted that Points of Reference has been included in this years Manly Book Artists' Award 2023. It is always exciting to be amongst so many of the wonderful book artists this award always attracts. In this blog I will attempt to give some idea of the processes involved in getting just one of the three puzzle/game like books that make up the whole set into a final book from an original, related idea 10 years ago.
The original small unique work 16 century map was a trial attempt at juxtaposing the exterior old European map (showing Mesopotamia and the Euphrates, the Northern hemisphere’s cradle of civilization) with the interior Australian map of the Kakadu National Park to get at the concept of Tjukurpa, by which Australia’s Anangu refer to the creation period. This little book was acquired by Robert Bolick for his Books on Books Collection. a few years ago in 2020.
In discussions with Bob, he introduced me to the work of a very early Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe and his amazing life. Bob expressed interest should I ever revisit this early book in another context and design including references to Tycho Brahe later on. So recently, a documentary showing how Judy Dench was related to this astronomer reminded me of an earlier interest, I revisited my notes on Tycho and made plans to make a new series perhaps for an exhibition.
Luckily, I had blogged about the first book earlier on - (so much more reliable than my failing memory). The new artists' book is Points of Reference and consists of a series of three related books boxed as one collection of which this is the first.
Each book has two puzzle like pages of contrasting sides or charts. Originally, I explored the possibility of contrasting one of Tycho Brahe's charts with a view of the night sky as seen from an indigenously significant location. However, I abandoned both because of difficulties with copyright issues and possible cultural sensitivities.
Instead, I contrasted an image of Brahe 's constellation Stella Nova 1572 {with a reference to his golden nose piece, having lost his original nose in a duel} to a modern imaginary space map referring to some of our satellites and space stations , showing the increasingly crowded sky full of commercial and abandoned space junk around the Southern Cross which is a special constellation in our part of the world.
| inside |
| outside cover |
| insides |
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This section is the most difficult to process (so many plans and areas to explore and research)but I will talk about the other two parts of this book later, one section at a time if I don't runout of steam.