MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
Education KIT
Collected
Collaborations
Redrawing Collective and OSW
4 August - 1 October 2011
The Exhibition
Collected Collaborations, initiated by the Artists’ Book Research Group,
features propositional projects from the Redrawing Collective and OSW.
Catalogue essayist Brad Haylock suggests that ‘In the present moment, we
are witnessing an international surge in the popularity of artists’ books and
independent publishing, a trend that fetishises printed matter and which is
accordingly yielding a glut of uncritical and self-congratulatory titles’.
The Redrawing Collective (Bronwyn Clark-Coolee, Ben Harper, Fiona
Macdonald, Alex Martinis Roe, Thérèse Mastroiacovo and Spiros
Panigirakis) focuses upon the artist’s book as a collective site of production
and reception. The group examines and remodels the record of its past
dialogues, creating a two-part book that is both a performative object and a
platform for critical engagement.
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia
OSW (Open Spatial Workshop) (Terri Bird, Bianca Hester and Scott Mitchell)
presents an artist’s book that reframes the group’s archive, remodelled as
an expanded diagram. The publication operates as a generative device that
elaborates connections within OSW’s research into spatial practices and the
politics of movement.
Grounded in the two collectives’ respective practices, the two projects in
Collected Collaborations encourage us to interrogate the popularity and
fetishisation of the artist’s book, to ask the question ‘why publish?’, and to
proceed in the making and the reception of artists’ books with a critical eye.
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OSW
BIG LOG 2011
installation view
photo: Warren Fithie
MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
Collected Collaborations
An interview with Brad Haylock from the
Artists’ Book Research Group
When and how did the Artists’ Book Research Group form?
The ABRG formed at the beginning of 2010. It emerged organically out
of discussions between a number of individuals who shared an interest
in artists’ books, but the group’s collective activities quickly gathered
momentum.
Which departments from the Faculty of Art & Design are involved?
How did this eventuate?
Staff from the departments of Design and Fine Art are involved. We
approach the topic of artists’ books from several different disciplinary
angles, and with different interests, but this results in productive debate.
Some members of the group had worked together on artists’ books in the
past, but the ABRG has also fostered a number of new connections and
collaborations.
What is your own personal interest in the artist’s book?
It’s saccharine to say so, but I have a strong passion for books in general.
More specifically, and from a more academic point of view, the artist’s book
is an exciting platform for experimentation and for the dissemination of
artistic knowledge. I’m particularly interested in the artist’s book as portable
but durable vehicle for critical practices and projects.
Do you have any suggested readings on artists’ books?
Some suggested readings are:
The century of artists’ books, by Johanna Drucker, New York: Granary
Books, 2004, Artists’ Books: The Book as Work of Art, by Stephen Bury,
1963–1995, Hant, Great Britain: Scolar Press, 1995 and Artists books: a
critical survey of the literature, by Stefan Klima New York: Granary books,
1998.
And some suggested artists’ books to have a look at?
Xavier Antin - Just in Time, or A Short History of Production
Why do you think these departments and study areas are interested in
the Artist’s Book?
Artists’ books represent a rich opportunity for collaboration and discussion
between practitioners from a wide variety of disciplines. There are parallel
histories of making artists’ books in the disciplines of printmaking,
photography, graphic design and conceptual art. It’s not surprising that the
ABRG should have been formed; what is surprising is the fact that we didn’t
do it sooner.
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia
Aurélien Arbet, Jérémie Egry and Nicolas Poillot - Picture Sculpture
Sarah Browne - From Margin to Margin (Looking for Eileen)
Sean Edwards - Maelfa
and
Ed Ruscha’s - Twenty-six Gasoline Stations -- (of course!)
OSW, BIG LOG 2011 (detail)
digital image
courtesy of the artists
MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
Collected Collaborations
OSW
An Interview with Terri Bird from OSW.
OSW projects emerge from a shared interest in spatiality and temporality,
and their connections to movement, duration and the production of new
configurations and understandings of site and its inhabitation. Initial events
at CLUBSproject, Melbourne, included CLUBS-tennis and Fish-time, both
in 2003. This was followed by Active-air, in 2005 at Ocular Lab, and Race
against time in 2006 for Resistance is Futile, curated by Kim Donaldson
at VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery, both in Melbourne. The video and
installation Diagram of Relations was developed for workshop.nonstop,
curated by Lisa Kelly, at Loose Gallery Sydney in 2007. This was the first
exploration of the accumulating archive/diagram that tracks the progression
of events, exhibitions and public projects, as well as related conceptual
tangents and peripheral activities. This accumulating record is also the basis
for the current project BIG LOG. In 2005 OSW won the inaugural Melbourne
Prize for Urban Sculpture for its propositional work groundings. Other public
proposals include Landings shortlisted for Victoria Green, Docklands. An
interest in working with the relationships between practices of art, sites
of its production, presentation and reception lead OSW to stage the west
Brunswick Sculpture Triennial (wBST) in 2009. This was a multifaceted event
dispersed across five sites, involving 24 local and interstate artists, together
with film and sound contributions from many more.
OSW formed in 2002, who is involved and how did the members meet?
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia
Bianca and I were involved in setting up CLUBSproject - an artist run
initiative that operated between 2002 and 2008, mostly above the Builders
Arms Hotel in Fitzroy. CLUBS aimed to be a flexible resource where
individuals and groups could meet and experiment with producing and
making their practices public. OSW started in response to this possibly.
We invited Scott Mitchell and Natatsha Johns-Messenger to join us because
of our shared interests in spatial practice. Initially we met in the space
at CLUBSproject and literally work-shopped ideas. These workshops
happened on Saturdays when CLUBS was provisionally open to the public
– hence ‘open spatial workshop’. Although in reality the public only really
came along once we advertised the event. The inaugural event at CLUBS
was CLUBS-tennis held in March 2003.
A few years ago Natasha moved to New York to study film, so since 2005,
OSW has been the three of us (Bianca Hester, Scott Mitchell and myself).
How would you define collaboration and what is your interest in it as a
working methodology and practice?
Prior to working together as OSW we had known each other for a number
of years. Over that time we’d developed a knowledge of, and dialogue
around each other’s practices, as well as an understanding of our individual
interests and expertise out of which our shared interests developed.
These interests include a commitment to a sculpturally based practice that
investigates ideas of materiality, spatial and temporal understandings, the
politics of movement and occupation. Our collaborative processes built on
these understandings. With regards to the collaborative process I would
say, it’s not so much a fusion or integration of separate individuals as in
an ‘us’ or a collective subject as in a ‘we’, it’s more impersonal. There is a
multiplication of singularities that rather than being cumulative, proliferates.
Collected Collaborations, 2011
installation view, left to right: Redrawing Collective and OSW
photo: Warren Fithie
MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
Collected Collaborations
The pleasure of the process is that there is no first person - it’s like
someone else made the work.
In the catalogue, Brad Haylock suggests that OSW’s ‘practice
frequently comprises material interventions that expose subjective
or shared relationships with space’. How is this documented in the
work BIG LOG? Why did you choose to represent these ideas or your
practice in this way?
I’m not sure this answers your question, but in terms of the spatiality of the
form of the object component of Big Log it’s derived from the diagram. It
describes a movement through space that corresponds to a movement
of ideas, which are initially mapped in the diagram and subsequently reiterated through the Big Log book. Perhaps unlike previous projects, this
object is not responding to the situation of its context, instead it’s forming
its context as an effect of a movement through space.
What’s evident in the images, particularly the juxtaposition of images, in
the Big Log book is OSW’s ongoing interest in the materiality of situations
across various scales, and how this expresses subjective relations to the
spatial.
What do you see as the relationship between the artist’s book, the
archive and mapping?
We’ve used the artist’s book as a procedural device to map our archive,
based on the diagram we’ve been using to track our projects and related
ideas and activities. The page and book form have a certain organizational
logic that we’ve used to overlay the diagram – this structuring mechanism
appears as pink diamonds or squares on each page in the book, and they
are collected together on the last page. The process has brought together
ideas and activities that weren’t necessarily associated previously. As a
result this procedure, of course, reconfigures the archive and its relations
to the diagram, which opens up both, the diagram and archive, to new
connections and relationships that we will explore in the future.
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia
Research is emphasised as being an important aspect of OSW’s
practice – can you discuss research and its implications working
both as a group and individually and perhaps give an example of the
process through examples of a previous project or work?
I think all art practice is research, an enquiry into something – an
understanding, a set of possibilities, a material investigation, a history, a
spatial organization, etc. I don’t think art ‘represents’ something already
known; rather meanings are produced through what it does, what
relations it forms or connections it makes, and what is invested in these.
Our approach to practice is to experiment with the possibilities of a given
situation or understanding.
For example the discussion in our initial workshop ended up focusing
around questions of gravity, and particularly its effects on the form of
objects. Experimenting with this we arrived at the idea of hiring some tennis
ball machines. These machines enhanced the force of the tennis balls and
enabled them to describe the spaces of CLUBS. They were propelled
through the volumes of the rooms, and out of a window rebounding off the
wall opposite and sometime returning back through the window. The work
was an experiment with the forces of gravity and the force of the machine,
and their possibilities in describing space.
Links:
OSW
http://www.osw.com.au/
CLUBSproject
http://www.clubsproject.org.au/
Bianca Hester
http://www.biancahester.net/
Scott Mitchell
http://www.openobject.org/
OSW, BIG LOG 2011 (detail of page 45)
Digital image
courtesy of the artists
MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
Collected Collaborations
the redrawing Collective
The Redrawing collective has been working since 2005 developing
conversations, prototypes, and collective critiques as models for a set of
ongoing practices of translation and remediation. The Redrawing exhibition
2008 (Project Space/Spare Room, RMIT University, Melbourne and CAST
Hobart) brought together the group’s activities in the form of essays,
drawings, performances, recordings, furniture, diagrams, interviews and
an artists’ convention. Now, for this exhibition, Collected Collaborations
2011, these works are revised around questions of collaboration and
communicability through a collective examination of the artist’s book as a
site of production.
A (fake) interview (with factual
information) from the Redrawing
Collective….
When and how did the Redrawing Collective form? Who is involved
and how did the members meet?
Redrawing is a conversation, 2005 – ongoing.i
The Redrawing Collective is Bronwyn Clark-Coolee, Ben Harper, Fiona
Macdonald, Alex Martinis Roe, Thérèse Mastroiacovo and Spiros
Panigirakis.
What all the practices in Redrawing have in common is an idea of a now
in progress, that is not drawn around discrete moments or originality or
historical representational models, but that conceives of the work of art as
an event – occurring, recurring, and open in various forms to a discourse
as a model and therefore, the artwork is conceived as mediated by
technologies of meaning and reception as well as production.ii
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia
How would you define collaboration and what is your interest in it as a
working methodology and practice?
Redrawing is an ongoing project.iii
The Redrawing Collective is a group of artists brought together by a shared
interest in the artwork as it is mediated by reception. Despite their title they
are notoriously difficult to collectivise… the basis for their collective activities
taking place as a series of intermittent conversations that may or may not
become implemented into group production.iv
Most recently, this lack of cohesion in the collective has resulted in a new
work that represents some members of the collective by their presence and
others by their absence, and that demonstrates the modular and contingent
relations of the collective engagement of the group.v
Can you discuss how performance, drawing and interviews have been
used in your practice in the past?
Redrawing is a recursive attention to other artists’ practices or works.
Redrawing collective practices are a text.
Redrawing collective practices are variously acts of reclassification,
reiteration, translation, mediation and amplification.
Redrawing works with the specific attributes of drawing as a conceptual
practices of notation, drafting, diagramming, etc. that can be manifested in
any medium and through any form of presentation.
Redrawing practices exist within other practices.vi
Can you discuss your interest in artists’ books, the newspaper and
their relation to your remaking of Aleksandr Rodchenko’s proposal for
a workers’ club and your particular interest in it?
The book as a site for both production and reception of the artwork, has
been a model examined by each of the Redrawing artists – as artwork to
text, text to material, as documentation to re-documentation. The mediation
performed by the book and its deployment of artwork as an adjunct form
has formed one of the collective’s practices.vii
Redrawing Collective
Redrawing: essays, extracts, remediations,
spectrograms, connectors, covers, and
wrapping, compiled with labour and by
mechanical and technological reproduction for
potential recombination and deferred intention,
2005-2011 2011, installation view
Thérèse Mastroiacovo, Redrawing: essays,
extracts, remediations, spectrograms,
connectors, covers, and wrapping,
compiled with labour and by mechanical
and technological reproduction for potential
recombination and eferred intention, 2005-2011
2011 (detail of cover) graphite on paper
courtesy of the artist
MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
Collected Collaborations
The material and conceptual architecture of the Redrawing book reflects
the structural concerns of the collective toward the book as a form of
distribution.viii
Starting points
For the purposes of the exhibition, the collective has agreed to display
certain sections of the book and not others, the wrapping and covers not
exhibitable. The newspaper sits on a reading desk.ix
An Artist’s Book is generally a book created by an artist and intended to
be experienced and thought of as a work of art. Artists’ books help us to
consider the idea of ‘reading’ an artwork and question traditional ideas
of framing, works hung on walls and narrative. The Artist’s Book can also
challenges the idea of what a book is and questions its usual forms and
purpose. Typically artists’ books are limited editions, however many are ‘one
offs’ or unique.
i.
Redrawing., ‘Redrawing Practice’, Redrawing Times, Vol 1, No.1, Thursday August 4, 2011,
p.4
ii.
Mcdonald, F., Redrawing, RMIT ProjectSpace/Spare Room, Melbourne, 2008 (catalogue)
iii.
opcit, Redrawing, p.4
iv.
Mcdonald, F., ‘Redrawing Now’, Redrawing Times, Vol 1, No.1, Thursday August 4, 2011,
p.1
v.
ibid
vi.
opcit, Redrawing, p.4
vii.
Mcdonald, F., ‘Redrawing Now’, Redrawing Times, Vol 1, No.1, Thursday August 4, 2011,
p.2
viii.
ibid
ix.
ibid
Artist’s Books and Collaboration
• What is the difference between an artist’s book and a fanzine?
• How do the artist’s books in this exhibition differ from books in general?
Consider the typography, layout and design along side the content and its
presentation.
• Consider how the artist’s book has been framed by the installation of
furniture and sculptural supports in this exhibition. Discuss the materials
used, the type of structures and their function.
• What forms of the artist’s book have been utilised in this exhibition?
• What type of relationships can you draw between the works?
• Research the artists in OSW and The Redrawing Collective - how might
their individual practices and research interests influence the collective?
• Discuss the difference between publishing and exhibiting? Is there a
relationship between the two?
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia
Redrawing Collective
Redrawing Times: 4 August 2011, 2011 (detail of page 22)
newspaper
24 pages: 58.0 x 35.0 cm
MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
Collected Collaborations
Considering practice and style
Possibilities for making:
• Compare the ways in which OSW and The Redrawing Collective have
considered and used the artist’s book in the exhibition. Consider the subject
matter used by each, artistic and cultural influences and the materials and
processes.
• Create your own artist’s book by altering an existing publication. Decide
on the content and form. What are you trying to communicate? What parts
of the publication can you alter? What can you erase or remove? What can
you add?
• Consider the idea of research being presented as an artwork. What other
explicit examples of this can you find in history?
• Working with another student, consider the idea of the artist’s book and
instead of making a printed publication decide on another from within
which the book may exist – you could think about video, photography,
documented performance, blog and/or website.
• Speculate as to the influences for The Redrawing Collective’s use of
space and ‘redrawing’ of Rodchenko’s proposal for a Reading Room for a
Workers’ Club – why would this have been chosen?
• Discuss the idea of appropriation and how this might differ to The
Redrawing Collective’s idea of redrawing.
• Discuss collaboration. Why do each of the groups use this as a form of
practice? How does this challenge the traditional idea of a solo artist?
• Explore the idea of collecting to create a map or a portrait of yourself,
friend or family member. What archives do we personally accumulate? What
might they tell us? How are they stored? Are they private or public? How do
we display them? How might you present this research to be viewed as an
artwork?
• Consider the work of other collectives and groups (there is a list below)
– compare and contrast the work of these groups with OSW and The
Redrawing Collective.
The museum and its role.
• Research the history of the Monash University Museum of Art. Why might
a museum like MUMA present the work of two collectives alongside that
of The Devil had a Daughter (an exhibition that draws from the University
collection) and an exhibition of recent works by Juan Davila?
• Each of the exhibitions utilise space in very different ways – describe the
approach to installing work for each of these exhibitions.
• Consider the promotional material used for each of these exhibitions –
what information does it contain? Who is represented?
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia
View of reading area, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Workers’ Club, exhibited at the International
Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, Paris, 1925.
The original is in the A. Rodchenko and V. Stepanova Archive, Moscow
MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
Collected Collaborations
Other Links and resources:
Collaboration
Taking the Matter into Common Hands Contemporary Art and
Collaborative Practices
Edited by Johanna Billing, Maria Lind, Lars Nilsson
Black Dog Publishing, London, 2008.
The third hand: collaboration in art from conceptualism to
postmodernism
By Charles Green
UNSW Press, Sydney, 2001.
Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art
By Grant H. Kester
University of California Press, 2004.
Art and Collaboration
Edited by Prof John Roberts
Art and Collaboration: Introduction (with S. Wright) and Collaboration as a
Problem of Art’s Cultural Form.
Special Issue of Third Text, 18(6), pp. 531-532 and pp. 557-564. November,
2004.
Temporary Services
Temporary Services is Brett Bloom, Salem Collo-Julin and Marc Fischer.
We are based in Chicago and Copenhagen and have existed, with several
changes in membership and structure, since 1998. We produce exhibitions,
events, projects, and publications. The distinction between art practice and
other creative human endeavours is irrelevant to us.
http://www.temporaryservices.org/
Xavier Antin
http://www.xavierantin.fr/archive/Just-In-Time/
Ed Ruscha - Twenty-six Gasoline Stations
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/twentysix-gasoline-stations/
Sarah Browne - From Margin to Margin (Looking for Eileen)
http://www.sarahbrowne.info/media/PROJECTS/2010/margin-daimler/
index.html
Sean Edwards - Maelfa
http://www.thisistomorrow.info/viewArticle.aspx?artId=696
Collaborative Arts
Conversations on Collaborative Arts Practice.
http://collabarts.org/
Aurélien Arbet, Jérémie Egry and Nicolas Poillot - Picture Sculpture
http://www.aa-je.com/
http://web.me.com/formuledepolitesse/jsbj-je-suis-une-bande-de-jeunes/
jsbj-picture-sculpture.html
Groups and Spaces
An online portal for independent art spaces and groups.
http://groupsandspaces.net/
Rodchenko’s Reading Rooms
Ant Farm
http://web.archive.org/web/20061205052858/http://antfarm.org/
DAMP
A Melbourne based collective.
http://dampdamp.weebly.com/index.html
Group Material
Formed in 1980, Group Material are a group who utilise the artist book,
curatorial strategies and social engagement as an art practice. They
describe themselves as a New York City-based organization of artists
dedicated to the creation, exhibition, and distribution of art that increases
social awareness.
http://www.leftmatrix.com/grouptlist.html
Activist Club or On the Concept of Cultural Houses, Social Centres &
Museums
Dmitry Vilensky
An essay on art and social space, ideas of which are referred to by the
Redrawing Collective and their ‘remake’ of Rodchenko’s proposal for a
Workers’ Club.
http://eipcp.net/transversal/0910/vilensky/en
Artist Michel Aubry’s meticulous documentation of the reconstruction
of Rodchenko’s Workers’ Club
http://www.michelaubry.fr/club.html
N55
A Scandinavian based collective whose work also utilises the artist’s book in
their practice.
http://www.n55.dk
Rodchenko & Popova: Defining Constructivism
TATE Modern
Documentation of Alexander Rodchenko’s proposal for the Workers’ Club
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/rodchenkopopova/roomguide/
room12.shtm
Artists Books
Workers Clubs in Soviet History
http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1924club
s&Year=1924&navi=byYear
State Library of Victoria
http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/our-collections/collection-strengths/history-book/
artists-books
Bonnie Fortune and Brett Bloom
An artists library online
http://www.letsremake.info/
Sticky Institute
Sticky is retail environment and non profit arts space dedicated to Australian
and international zine culture.
http://www.stickyinstitute.com/
Printed Matter
Printed Matter is the world’s largest non-profit organization dedicated to the
promotion of publications made by artists.
http://www.printedmatter.org/
Susan Smith-Clark Fanzine Collection at the national Library of
Australia
http://www.nla.gov.au/collect/s-clarke.html
Bonnie Fortune and Brett Bloom
An artists library online
http://www.letsremake.info/
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia
www.monash.edu.au/muma
Telephone +61 3 9905 4217
muma@monash.edu
Tues – Fri 10am – 5pm; Sat 12 – 5pm