The challenge we set: to use what we had to make something especially for World Book Night 2024’s theme, In praise of birds.

Bower Ashton Library, UWE Bristol, City Campus at Bower Ashton, Bristol, UK

What if you could grow a forest from a collection. What if you could weave a floor to ceiling landscape from E. G. Adamson’s Snow coral (1930s–1940s) and Louisa Anne Meredith’s Study for gum-flowers and ‘love’ (c. 1860). Slide Tom Roberts’s She-oak and sunlight (1889) alongside Tom Humphrey’s Summer walk (c. 1888), and glimpse Grace Cossington-Smith’s Bottlebrushes (1935) through the foliage.

To those who require foraging resources and roosting sites.

To the ingenious ecological kindness of the pollinators and seed dispersers.

The echolocators catching insects on the wing. The leaf-consuming fuel-reducers.

The intricate connection of all things.

There were once trees growing under the roads. There are still creeks flowing beneath the directional pathways we’ve imposed.

An artists’ book to take you within the forest, created especially for Biosphere.

Including
Biosphere — a sense of belonging catalogue essays by Felicity Spear and Penelope Gebhardt, 2021–2022

Empty the room. View it from the outside in. Brick by brick. Twig by twig. At the beginning: what is there?

An artists’ book featuring variations of the original Bowerbird collages we created especially for Genevieve Lacey’s Bower.

Dive into a 620cm long digital collage with an original watercolour cover, created especially for the NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair 2021.

A Hemline of Sky Through Smoke

A Hemline of Forest Through Smoke

A Hemline of Water Through Smoke

For the Museum of Aphorisms and Platitudes, we created a real but not real 24-page catalogue of Through a glass eye.

Paw Pad Path was selected for the 2018 Libris Awards: Australian Artists’ Book Prize exhibition at Artspace Mackay. Paw Pad Path was acquired by Artspace Mackay.

I think all the world is falling

No longer six feet under

Disrupted and rumpled

Dim wood, spark bright

A warmed pebble in my hand

From Adelie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) to Zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), a digital edition of the unique state artists’ book Prattle, scoop, trembling: a flutter of Australian birds (2016).

Your nimble tread

Your untroubled verse

This artists’ book, The Company You Keep, was released into the wild at the 2016 Melbourne Art Book Fair at the National Gallery of Victoria. In addition, this artists’ book of Yellow-headed parrots and Laughing owls was acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria.

Whether knee-deep in carpet weave or native grass clump, this naturalist's companion is misleading, but its dedication, sincere. Created especially for and exhibited in its entirety as part of Birds: Flight paths in Australian Art at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery.

Including
Leah Muddle, True or False? Milly Sleeping: Quick Interview with Gracia Haby of Gracia & Louise, 2017

In continuation of a theme explored for Animal Instinct (2016), thirteen costumed Salvaged Relatives on cartes de visite have been paired with drawings of the same collage element in a new and arguably more natural setting.

Including
Printing the Page, State Library Victoria (2016)

Because I Like You is based on the concept of a love letter to ten mammals.

Including
Contemporary Paper: Celebrating a Year of Print (2016)
Wrap Up (2015)

In a borrowed costume from Pulcinella, deigned by Giorgio de Chirico, 1932, with a Gouldian finch (Erythrura gouldiae) looking to form a charm and others.

Salvaged Relatives, edition I

Salvaged Relatives, edition II

Salvaged Relatives, edition III

An artists’ book twenty-six pages in length, made especially for the National Gallery of Victoria’s inaugural Melbourne Art Book Fair, NGV International, May 2015, which at first glance appears to take place in several of the 15,000 rooms of the Château de Fontainebleau.

Including
Gracia & Louise on making artists’ book, State Library Victoria (2015)

A suite of seventeen collages made especially for and exhibited as part of In Your Dreams (Counihan Gallery, 2014), and accompanying dream text, assembled in a handmade Solander box guarded by Petrouchka. This artists’ book is now in the collection of State Library Victoria.

A pair of artists’ books made especially for and exhibited as part of In Your Dreams (Counihan Gallery, 2014), which takes place in the Palace of Versailles, a royal château in the Île-de-France region of France, and is now in for the collection of Monash University Library (Caulfield Campus).

Under the water, with a two-colour eye-glass, something similar

As if from the clouds, restless

The Loon of Swan Hill seeks an audience

In Louise Jennison’s A Year of Southern Hemisphere Birds unique state artists’ book, twelve birds are brought together and their portraits hand-drawn for posterity.

This artists’ book was launched alongside A Year of Southern Hemisphere Birds in the Leigh Scott Room of the Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne, 2013.

Made especially for and exhibited as part of Charms of the Gloaming (2012), this collaborative hand-bound concertina artists’ book, Beneath the screen of closed eyelids (Port-Said), features twelve hand-coloured scenic views of Port-Said each with collage elements.

The weather, clement, and perfect for mooching, ambling, swanning, indeed, walking As inclination directs.

Testing the laws of hazard

This is where the dormouse lives

A headdress to show you how much I care

All that’s bewitching by the water (Capri)

And with that, she sets off on the journey home