Marginalia

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In the bag

Zines and prints and artists' books


Released at the NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair 2018
Now available through our online store


Leaping and falling, setting and rising, an exaltation of Emily Dickinson’s leopards in the sky landing at the feet of the old horizon. In a poem, in life, the sun as a source of light and heat and a measure of time, the cycle of nature is a beautiful, precarious, and ceaseless movement. A week-and-a-bit has passed since the Melbourne Art Book Fair, a week-and-a-bit of a chain of leopards leaping to the sky before tumbling to heel at dusk. Time and pattern marked this way appeals to me. Why should the sun be a ball of fire quenched by night when instead it can arch like a wildcat at dawn, in one endless loop? Pawing at, examining, what it means to be a human being, by way of the world of nature is at the heart of our latest zines and prints uploaded to our online store. Nature, near ungraspable to the human mind, any hope of fully understanding it remains gloriously elusive. Nature, in our work, is also often used to illustrate an interior world.

Head to our online store to pick up a copy of Looped, a facsimile of Paw Pad Path, or a knot of netsuke at play in Your gelatine silver print, in the shape of the full moon. Three of Louise’s wood engravings have also been listed, one of which, rather fittingly, is a leopard, albeit a snow leopard from the pages of our artists’ book, Because I like you (2016). One, a leopard-sun as an illusion, a conjurer’s sleight of hand, the other, a leopard-inked, for your wall, an Ortolan bunting too.

For your bag,
Looped (2018)
Paw Pad Path (2018)
Your gelatine silver print, in the shape of the full moon (2018)

For your wall,
Ortolan bunting (2018)
Howler monkey (2015)
Snow leopard (2015)

In other news, related to nature and a sleight of hand, the Australian Book Designers Association have announced the Longlist for the 66th Australian Book Design Awards 2018, and we are delighted that our book, Prattle, scoop, trembling: a flutter of Australian birds, is one of seven longlisted in the Best Designed Independent Book category. They have flown, our birds, into very fine company. They are basking in the sunlight.

Several editions of Prattle, scoop, trembling can also be found in our online store.

Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple
Leaping like Leopards to the Sky
Then at the feet of the old Horizon
Laying it's spotted Face to die
Stooping as low as the Otter's Window
Touching the Roof and tinting the Barn
Kissing it's Bonnet to the Meadow
And the Juggler of Day is gone
— Emily Dickinson (1830–86)


Image credit: Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison, Paw Pad Path, 2018