NightLadder Collective Exhibition Connect-ed at Brisbane Institute of Art Oct 2017

Showing three of my works Thirteen Meditations on the Untranslatable, MAENAD: Manifesto, and Index. 

In all of my works in this exhibition I am interested in text and image and notions of manuscript. Each of the three works offers a different aspect of the relationship. INDEX is an artist Book handwritten in ink on double sided pages, however the form of the book (a concertina bookended by two Witches Stairs) deliberately makes it impossible to read the words. Maenad – MANIFESTO is an altered book, the first in the MAENAD series. It is deconstructed from its original form (Maquarie Dictionary) and repurposed so that the opened pages move from a reading as text (book) to its possibility as image (ink on paper displayed on a gallery wall). My selection of specific words offers a critique of the historical moment in which we are living. In Thirteen Mediations on the Untranslatable seriality offers a method to contemplate the temporal. The unique-state, bleed etchings are contemplative, enigmatic and uncontained, deliberately at a scale to draw the viewer in to personal encounter. The work consists of thirteen etchings and a thirteen stanza poem.

Thirteen Meditations,  published by Axon: Creative Explorations, materiality, creativity and material poetics (2018). https://www.axonjournal.com.au/issues/8-1/thirteen-meditations-untranslatable 

ABBE Artist Book Masterclass with Uta Schneider & Ulrike Stoltz

Participants discuss our work after a wonderful two day Masterclass in the QCA studios

Pleasure/Demolition by Caren Florance

The wonderful poet Owen Bullock singing my poetry in a public performance at East Space Gallery Canberra in March. The artwork is Pleasure/Demolition by Caren Florance using words from my Notes for Architects series. Pleasure Demolition was selected for exhibition in the 2017 Nonesuch Art Of Paper Awards exhibitions in Canada.

Working Papers a collaboration with Caren Florance

This project with artist Caren Florance saw me in her letterpress studio setting the type (stream of consciousness) for what would become the poem 'the future unimagine' published by Cordite. The blocks of typeset text were then worked on by Caren Florance, printed on Japanese paper and sent to me so that I could draw on the pages. This work was mentioned in the news of the print world (selected new editions) section of Art in Print (USA). Caren and I gave a paper on the collaboration "Unfolding to refold: collaborative wordings" at the ABBE conference in Brisbane July 2017. The artwork and the poem is also reproduced as a visual/poetry book published by Recent Works Press. This book and its ephemera has entered the collections of The National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum and The Poetry Library London. 

Definitely creating new audiences for Visual Art through Poetry and for Poetry through Visual Art.

Reading Spaces Exhibition East Space Gallery Canberra

Just back from Canberra where my collaborative poetry/printmaking project with artist Caren Florance Working Papers was being exhibited in the wonderful East Space Gallery. Also on show was her take Pleasure/Demolition on some of my poems from the Notes to Architects series. I got to do two readings while I was down there and attend the University of Canberra's Symposium on Poetry and the Artist Book.

Writer in Residence Canberra September 2019

Just heard that I will be Writer in Residence for the A.C.T. (Australian Capital Territory) in Canberra in September 2019.  

The Told World on display right next to Hardy & David Jones in Waterstones, Greenwich, UK!

Scape

Scape - a visual response to the poetry of Angela Gardner has been showing at the Brisbane Institute of Art. Really enjoy it when poetry enters galleries and visual art responds to poetry. The work shown by The Collective was sensitive, enquiring and thoughtful. It was wonderful to read my poetry to an enthusiastic crowd of gallery goers.

‘Last Flight’ artist book from the ‘Conflict in History’ Residency at Manly and Sheffield

Manly Library Artist’s Book Award, selected by Helen Cole & Steven Miller, Manly NSW 24 March to 12 April 2015
Now selected for 
5^th Sheffield International Artist Book Award – Bank Arts, Sheffield UK, Oct 2015
(This artist book was lost in-transit to the Sheffield and had to be withdrawn. Last known whereabouts Sheffield Post Office - isn't tracking marvellous - now I know where it is lost!)

Exhibition - The Spaces Between

artist book interference with Caren Florance at Brenda May Gallery

Small Publishers: Brenda May Gallery, Sydney from 17 Feb to 14 March, curated by Akky von Ogtropp. 

Artist Book 'Intention' part of ‘Conflict in History’ Residency

Intention uses a combination of text and image to commemorate the lives of refugees drowned at Christmas Island attempting to reach Australia by boat. As a migrant I have immigrated to Australia twice, the first as a boat arrival aboard the S.S. Strathnaver, and later as an independent adult through a migrant application arriving by air.

There is a foreground image, solvent release, of geometric lines taken from Arabic geometry, skewed and disrupted, that is reminiscent of map projection lines. The background image, of offset intaglio printed etching and relief printed lino does not project any narrative but is intended to convey the emptiness and scale of the ocean. There is a vast loneliness and undifferentiated sameness to open ocean, and in rough weather a profound terror.

The text of Intention, in handwritten pencil, was written as part of my ‘Conflict in History’ Residency for the Australian Historical Association and the University of Queensland’s School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classic and the UQ Art Museum in the second half of 2014. It was published in Thing & Unthing, Angela Gardner, Vagabond Press, Sydney 2014.

Both books 21 x 13.5 x 1.2 closed and 21 x 300 open

etching, linocut, solvent release, pencil on Moleskine Japanese Album

Artist Book Last Flight, part of the 'Conflict in History Residency'

Last Flight uses a combination of text and image to explore the plight of the dispossessed, in particular refugees from Middle-Eastern conflict zones. As a migrant I have immigrated to Australia twice, once as a child ten-pound-Pom, and later as an independent adult through a migrant application. Any complications in my identity due to dual nationality pale into insignificance in relation to the distress of those forced to leave their homes and flee.

The primary sources for the solvent release images are news feeds and the internet, which is how we as Australians become informed about this conflict. It should be noted, in a blurring of boundaries, that some of the images are from war games and aerial survey maps of Australian suburbs.

The explanatory text on the meaning of the word conflict has been put through an optical character recognition software and translated between pdf and word files. The process has garbled the meaning and changed the image to text, addressing central and ongoing themes in my work of the stability of identity and meaning, between text and image. The images have been over-printed with offset intaglio printed etching.

The text of Last Flight, in handwritten pencil, was written as part of my ‘Conflict in History’ Residency for the Australian Historical Association and the University of Queensland’s School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classic and the UQ Art Museum in the second half of 2014. It was published in Thing & Unthing, Angela Gardner, Vagabond Press, Sydney 2014.

Extract from my artist book 'A Quiet Voice' published in APJ

"I particularly enjoyed the pieces with colour, especially ‘A Quiet Voice’ by Australian artist and poet Angela Gardner. In ‘A Quiet Voice’—a stunning fusion of watercolour, origami and poetry—Gardner delicately uses space and silence as an additional form of expression, and catalyst, that swings the reader between reading and viewing."

rochford street review on the concrete issue of australian poetry journal

Launch dates announced for Vagabond Press Decibel series

Sunday November 30 (3:30 for 4pm) - Sydney launch of deciBels (with Skype link up) - Gleebooks

Sunday December 7 (1:30 for 2pm) - Vagabond Press Christmas Party: launch of Jess Wilkinson (Percy), Andy Carruthers (Axis) and Chris Edwards (Naptime) - Gleebooks

Wednesday December 10 (6 for 6:30pm?) - Melbourne launch ofdeciBels - The Alderman (TBC)

Friday December 12 (6 for 6:30pm?) - Melbourne launch of Percy and Axis - Grainger Museum

link to vagabondpress website and the decibel series

Artist in Residence for ‘Conflict in History’

Currenly AHA Artist in Residence  for ‘Conflict in History’ supported by UQ Art Museum/ HPRC.

CODEX Australia Melbourne 2014

light-trap press took part in CODEX in Melbourne 2014

Swung Weight Poetry Broadsheet

Huge thanks to Caren Florance of Ampersand Duck who gave me studio time and her clean hands while I typeset the poem Swung Weight in Garamond English 12 point with title in Castellar 24 point and clouds in random woodtype. Incredible fun as always, relaxed, intelligent, generous and skilled...oh and the music in the studio keeps everything moving. Swung Weight will be published in due course by Ampersand Duck.

Poems in Cordite

Cordite 36: Electronica is now online and available for your viewing pleasure at:

http://cordite.org.au/electronica/
Look out for my two poems "Animal Light" and "We Are Called"

I am currently working on a commission for The Red Room Company for their Clubs & Societies project. I will be reading at The Queensland Poetry Festival 27 August at 10.30am, Theatre Space Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts 420 Brunswick St, Fortitude Valley.