A SERIES OF FOUR ARTISTS’ BOOKS, 2005
1/ The Case of the Lost Aviary
2/ By the Pricking of My Claws
3/ The Dubious Clue
4/ Trouble at Sea
Featuring a cast of extinct animals, a series of artists’ books with a distinct nod towards Agatha Christie, created for and exhibited as part of Ex Libris at RMIT, and later shown as part of Dervish (2006), Fictions (2008) at MUMA, and Interconnections: Books, Text, Art (2014) at the University of Melbourne’s Baillieu Library. Editions of these books are in the collections of the State Library of NSW, the State Library Victoria, Melbourne University Library, Monash University Library, and the National Gallery of Australia (formerly as part of the Ergas Collection).
1/ Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
The Case of the Lost Aviary
2005
Four page concertin artists’ book, single-colour lithographic offset print hand-coloured with pencil, pen, fluorescent marker and collage on Aquarelle Arches 100% pure cotton hot pressed 300gsm paper, 18cm X 14cm
Printed by Redwood Prints
Bound in cotton (by Louise Jennison), with engraved mirrored perspex discs on the cover
Edition of 16
Kioea
Last seen: 1859
Distribution: Hawaii and Oahu, Hawaiian Islands
Passenger pigeon
Last seen (in captivity): 1pm, 1st of September, 1914
Distribution: Eastern North America
Robust white-eye
Last seen: about 1918
Distribution: Lord Howe Island, Australia
2/ Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
By the Pricking of My Claws
2005
Eight page concertina artists’ book, single-colour lithographic offset print hand-coloured with pencil, pen and collage on Aquarelle Arches 100% pure cotton hot pressed 300gsm paper, 18cm X 18cm
Printed by Redwood Prints
Bound in cotton (by Louise Jennison), with engraved mirrored perspex discs on the cover
Edition of 16
White-footed rabbit-rat
Last seen: 1845
Distribution: South Eastern Australia
Bavarian pine-vole
Rediscovered: 2000, Northern Tyrol, Austria, after an absence of 38 years
Bulldog rat
Last seen: about 1903
Distribution: Christmas Island, Indian Ocean
Ivory-billed woodpecker
Rediscovered: 2004, in the Big Woods of Eastern Arkansas, United States of America, after an absence of 60 years
Lesser stick-nest rat
Last seen: afternoon 18th of July, 1933
Distribution: Southern inland Australia
Pig-footed bandicoot
Last seen: 1901
Distribution: inland Australia
3/ Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
The Dubious Clue
(also published under the title, Extinct Animals Sing the Blues)
2005
Eight page concertina artists’ book, single-colour lithographic offset print hand-coloured with pencil, pen, fluorescent marker and collage on Aquarelle Arches 100% pure cotton hot pressed 300gsm paper, 18cm X 14cm
Printed by Redwood Prints
Bound in cotton (by Louise Jennison), with engraved mirrored perspex discs on the cover
Edition of 16
Big-eared hopping-mouse
Last seen: 19th July 1843
Distribution: Moore river area, South Western Australia
Ilin Island cloudrunner
Last seen: 4th of April, 1953
Distribution: Ilin Island, Philippines
Little Swan Island hutia
Last seen: 1955
Distribution: South Little Swan Island, off North Eastern Honduras, Caribbean
Mamo
Last seen: July 1898
Distribution: Hawaii, Hawaiian Islands
Pink-headed duck
Last seen: about 1936
Distribution: floodplains of the Ganges and Brahmaputra, India
White-footed rabbit-rat
Last seen: 1845
Distribution: South Eastern Australia
4/ Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
Trouble at Sea
2005
Four page concertina artists’ book, single-colour lithographic offset print hand-coloured with pencil, pen and collage on Aquarelle Arches 100% pure cotton hot pressed 300gsm paper, 18cm X 18cm
Printed by Redwood Prints
Bound in cotton (by Louise Jennison), with engraved mirrored perspex discs on the cover
Edition of 16
Pemberton’s deer-mouse
Last seen: 26th of December, 1931
Distribution: San Pedro Noalsco Island, Gulf of California
Martinique giant rice-rat
Last seen: 1902
Distribution: Martinique, Caribbean
St Lucy giant rice-rat
Last seen: 1852
Distribution: Santa Lucia, Caribbean
TALL TALES AND ANTIPODEAN ADVENTURES: narratives in contemporary Australian printmaking
Jazmina Cininas
Imprint magazine
volume 41, number 2, winter 2006
The collaborative team of Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison,[xi] who have made the artist’s book their signature medium, also reserve their leading roles for extinct species. Their heroes’ adventures have a decidedly Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn flavour, even if the rumours of their deaths have not been exaggerated. Pink-headed ducks, Giant rice-rats and Bavarian pine-voles sport prison stripes and plan jail breaks in order to go fishing amongst desert cacti, while Robust white-eyes play cards and Passenger pigeons, drunk on alcohol soaked grain,[xii] attempt to hatch European Sea Urchins.
The Agatha Christie inspired titles — The Case of the Lost Aviary, Trouble at Sea, The Dubious Clue, By the Pricking of My Claws — acknowledge Haby & Jennison’s penchant for amateur detective work. Unearthing incriminating evidence against commercial hunters, volcanoes and ship-jumping black rats,[xiii] the artists conjure new, pseudo-scientific scenarios, their slippery approach to facts unfolding in whimsical narratives that operate according to their own logic. The artists take liberties with the argument that ‘narrative metaphors are an indispensable part of all ‘factual’ discourse, whether in history or in science’,[xiv] and wink at the commonly acknowledged notion that the historian’s work is partly scientific, partly artistic.[xv]
Haby & Jennison’s truth is, by necessity, a fabrication, the species themselves being lost for all time, at best leaving only fragmentary data from which to glean information. Their Pig-footed bandicoots, Deer mice and Bulldog rats are as fanciful as their names suggest, precariously balancing sailing boats for headgear or fossils as body parts. As barely intact as the last remaining specimen of the St Lucy Giant Rice-rat, they threaten to fall apart at the merest touch. Extinct Cloud runners and White-footed rabbit-rats croon their woes along with Memphis Slim, drawing on another vehicle rich in narrative history, the blues lyric.
….
The printing process, as both a technical and artistic activity, has been linked not only to the memory of human thought, but also to the memorial process. Prints, in their various guises and mediums, have played a pivotal role in recording the stories of our past, and continue to document possibilities of what might yet become. The best narrative printmakers employ printmaking’s intrinsic properties and illustrative traditions to create new fictions and expose new truths about ourselves, celebrating the invention inherent in all knowledge, in all history.
An extract from Imprint by Jazmina Cininas
[xi] Much of the following discussion of Haby & Jennison’s work is essentially a reworking of my earlier catalogue essay for Ex Libris at RMIT Project Space, 2005.
[xii] This was used by trappers to make the birds easier to catch. See below.
[xiii] Information on the passenger pigeon and the rats was supplied to the author by the artists, October 2005, citing Clive Ponting, A Green History of the World, Penguin Books, 1992 and Tim Flannery & Peter Schouten, A Gap in Nature — Discovering the World’s Extinct Animals, Text Publishing Australia, 2001.
[xiv] Donald N. McCloskey, cited in G. Thomas Tanselle, Printing History and Other History, Studies in Bibliography, Volume 48, 1995.
[xv] See G. M. Trevelyan, cited in ibid.
The Case of the Lost Aviary, By the Pricking of My Claws, The Dubious Clue, and Trouble at Sea were created for and exhibited as part of Ex Libris.
JUSTIN CALEO, GRACIA HABY & LOUISE JENNISON, JESSICA IRVIN, MARION MANIFOLD, JENNIFER MILLS, JULIA SILVESTER, KATE ZIZYS
EX LIBRIS
MONDAY 28TH OF NOVEMBER – FRIDAY 16TH OF DECEMBER, 2005
CURATED BY JAZMINA CININAS
PROJECT SPACE – SPARE ROOM, RMIT UNIVERSITY, RMIT BUILDING 94, LEVEL 2, ROOM 1, 23–27 CARDIGAN STREET, CARLTON
We later exhibited editions of our artists’ books, The Case of the Lost Aviary, By the Pricking of My Claws, The Dubious Clue, and Trouble at Sea as part of a dervish of an exhibition to celebrate Greville Street Bookstore’s 15th birthday and the opening of Imp above Greville Street Bookstore.
TIM FLEMING, GRACIA HABY AND LOUISE JENNISON, NICHOLAS JONES, DYLAN MARTORELL, JANE PEACOCK
DERVISH
WEDNESDAY 16TH OF AUGUST – SATURDAY 9TH OF SEPTEMBER, 2006
IMP GALLERY, ABOVE GREVILLE ST BOOKSTORE, 145 GREVILLE STREET, PRAHRAN
﹏
RELATED LINKS,
AND THE SILENTLY STEAL AWAY, PRINT CREATED FOR EX LIBRIS, 2005
FOR MARTHA, AN ARTISTS' BOOK BY LOUISE JENNISON, 2011–2012
RELATED POSTS,
ONCE, TWICE, TAGGED
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
FICTIONS
GO FOOTSCRAY!
FIVE SENSES IN ANTICIPATION
JUST SHY OF 31
DERVISH
YOU'RE INVITED
By the Pricking of My Claws and The Dubious Clue, alongside our artists’ books, Snug as a bug (2001), If all the stars go out, I'll follow my nose home (2007), and Rouen: Just passing through (2007), were exhibited as part of Fictions at Monash Switchback Gallery. “Revelling in the freedom of artistic invention, and drawing on a myriad of sources including literature, art history and the fantastic, the works in Fictions suspend[ed] our everyday realities, prompting contemplation of the nature of creativity and imagination.”
FICTIONS
WEDNESDAY 10TH OF SEPTEMBER – THURSDAY 9TH OF OCTOBER, 2008
PRESENTED BY MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART (MUMA)
CURATED BY KIRRILY HAMMOND
MONASH SWITCHBACK GALLERY, BUILDING 6S, MONASH UNIVERSITY, GIPPSLAND CAMPUS, CHURCHILL
In the library
By the Pricking of My Claws was exhibited as part of Interconnections: Books, Text, Art.
INTERCONNECTIONS: BOOKS, TEXT, ART
CURATED BY ASHLEY SUTHERLAND
GROUND FLOOR, BAILLIEU LIBRARY
MONDAY 29TH OF SEPTEMBER – SUNDAY 2ND OF NOVEMBER, 2014
”The book’s primacy in the dissemination of information has been challenged by the growth of digital communication. Information and text now exist in a variety of simultaneous physical and digital forms, as digital technology facilitates the independence of text and format. What then of objects whose content is inseparably embedded within their physical formats? This exhibition explores books as objects whose physical form, text, design and aesthetics are essential components of an integrated whole. It may be argued that books have always represented more than simply the information or text printed or written in them. They can stand as powerful symbols of the value of knowledge and learning, as well as being artistic expressions in themselves. Whilst texts can be presented in other forms, the physical act of writing or printing by hand using fine materials creates objects that offer information and meanings beyond that of their content. The Private Press movement in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries was a reaction against the mechanisation of the printing process, and a perceived return to the ideals of fine design and craft. The printed books from the Kelmscott, Eragny, Golden Cockerel Presses that are on display were conceived as artistic objects in their own right, with type, design, illustration and binding all conceived as integral to the presentation of the text. Artists’ books can challenge and explore the role of the book in the digital world. They may be in the form of sculptural objects, unique handmade books or limited editions. As handcrafted objects, either handmade or hand printed, they assert their status as artistic objects rather than mere vessels for information.”
