Open Library
LIBRARY & PANEL DISCUSSION | 27/03/21 | 12.00 PM
Through the open library, the public will explore publications that have informed and shaped ACB Press. Each publication is chosen for a critical design approach, furthermore investigating the role of collaboration between photographer, designer, and publisher.
Books are on display to create a conversation around photography and photo-book design. Included is a presentation by founder Rohan Hutchinson. Rohan has worked and been an educator within the global art book market for over 10 years and his books are held in collections globally.
Souvenirs of Sleep
TALK & BOOK LAUNCH | 27/03/21 | 1.30 PM
Filmmaker, Ling Ang, has been documenting her dreams through written records across the span of three years. She combines these journals with her photographs captured from the conscious world, to bring to life these personal subconscious narratives. Familiar landmarks turn into the locations of a sci-fi fantasy. Recurring themes revolving around her childhood, relationships, hedonism, trauma and the afterlife. The book invites the reader into a private world of universal vulnerabilities and challenges them to explore their own inhibitions.
Timeless Documents
PANEL DISCUSSION | 27/03/21 | 3.00 PM
Exhibitions are restricted by time, but the exhibition catalogue lives on; both as a piece of design and “time capsule” representing the social, political, personal and cultural concerns formed within an art exhibition. The exhibition catalogue reflects the concerns of yesterday and today, which inevitably reframe tomorrow.
CCP presents a community of creatives — designer, artist, writer, editor, curator — involved in producing a selection of catalogues from its 35-year history, alongside our upcoming catalogue for photographer Ruth Maddison, to talk to the production process and concerns of these “multiple todays” and how they are vital for thinking about tomorrow.
Speakers are Rhys Gorgol, Creative Director, The Company You Keep; Corey James, Senior Designer, The Company You Keep; Joseph Johnson, Senior Designer, Studio Ongarato; Ruth Maddison, Artist; Sonia Leber, Artist, Senior Industry Fellow, School of Art, RMIT; & Amelia Winata, Writer, editor of Memo Review and Index Journal.
Ruth Maddison: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times Exhibition Catalogue Launch
CATALOGUE LAUNCH | 27/03/21 | 4.30 PM
CCP is thrilled to launch the catalogue for Ruth Maddison’s acclaimed exhibition It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Spanning close to 200 pages, this landmark publication sits alongside Maddison’s exhibition as a key survey of her social documentary practice from 1976 to the current day. Covering key periods within Maddison’s extensive oeuvre, this publication features contextualising essays by a number of significant Australian writers and cultural figures, featuring Helen Ennis: Emeritus Professor, ANU School of Art & Design, Canberra; Robin Laurie: performer, film-maker, director, dramaturg and writer; Shaune Lakin: Head Curator of International Art at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Dr Kyla McFarlane: Senior Academic Programs Curator in Museums and Collections at the University of Melbourne; & Natalie Thomas: Melbourne based artist and writer.
Designed by The Company You Keep. Created with the support of the Gordon Darling Foundation.
nmp._04 Bridie Lunney
BOOK LAUNCH | 28/03/21 | 12.00 PM
no more poetry is pleased to present the first published book of poems by artist and writer Bridie Lunney. As a collection, Lunney’s book Sucking my Tongue to Keep the Salt of You Close is tender and commanding, a generous documentation of time and desire. It recounts the melding of two beings into each other and the self into everything. The book is bountiful with slow, intoxicating morning poems, poems of salt water and dense treacle, of late sun and new romance.
Speakers are Bridie Lunney, Author, nmp.03; Daniel Ward, Editor, no more poetry; Joshua Edward, Editor (Visual Art), and Designer, no more poetry.
Connection, Restriction and Making Photobooks
PANEL DISCUSSION | 28/03/21 | 1.30 PM
Recently, members of the Melbourne Photobook Collective have begun noticing changes in their art practice. In this conversation we discuss how restrictions are influencing our focus, changing our patterns of connection and impacting our photobook-making activities. As our movements are constrained and our physical interactions with others are curtailed we find ourselves looking inward and backward for inspiration, making connections with archival materials as well as renewing concepts and techniques. While being forced to slow down we have time for new ideas to crystallise. And as face-to-face interactions vanish new ways of connecting with other artists and new audiences emerge.
Speakers are Anne Davies, Photographic artist; Stuart Murdoch, Photographer; Mike Reed, Photographer; William Stewart, Photographer.
Small Business
BOOK LAUNCH | 28/03/21 | 3.00 PM
David Wadelton’s new book, Small Business designed by Yanni Florence and with an accompanying essay by Professor Natalie King OAM, looks at the small but enduring family-run businesses, often tucked away on suburban streets, which are rapidly fading away.
Many of the businesses have traded for decades, and continue to do so even as multi-storey developments and multi-nationals overshadow or consume them. The layouts featured are often pragmatic and utilitarian, arranged decades ago – often without regard for conventional design trends — and left that way. They are a time-capsule of a generation who toiled in their shop for decades.
Speaker Daniel Palmer is Professor and Associate Dean of Research and Innovation in the School of Art at RMIT University, Melbourne. His latest book is Photography and Collaboration: From Conceptual Art to Crowdsourcing (Bloomsbury, 2017).
Image Collective
PANEL DISCUSSION & PUBLICATION LAUNCH | 28/03/21 | 4.30 PM
In a world bloated with images, the activities of this collective forge meaningful engagement with the shifting grounds of what constitutes the construction, circulation, value and status of the image. This panel discussion unfolds the Image Collective’s activities, ranging from exhibitions and public programs to experimental and traditional publishing forms, including an online space that operates as a live working journal and a collaborative tool. Developed during the first Melbourne lockdown, it sought to emulate the incidental exchange of ideas that occurs in a shared studio space, drawing new ideas and voices into its orbit and informing the Collective’s new projects.
Speakers are Annika Koops, Artist; Lauren Dunn, Artist; & Olivia Poloni, Independent Curator.