More than fair, for sure
Melbourne Art Book Fair
Great Hall, NGV International
180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne
Friday 16th May – Sunday 18th May, 2025
Thank-you to everyone who swung by our stall at the eleventh NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair, held, as ever, in the majesty that is the bewitching Great Hall. We so enjoyed seeing you peep at our peepshow book, How will they know there’s no-one left; chatting about bookbinding techniques, glue drying times, and paper stock; about wildlife, winged and tailed, and marvellous in every way; about the importance of green corridors, acting upon nightmares, and making zines of your own about something important to and intrinsically you.
Dear familiar faces and new souls all, it was lovely to see you, and a true delight to share these new works and conversations with you. And so, pictured here, in random order, as befits a memory a fortnight ago, Friday morning’s swing to Sunday evening’s deinstall.
From Louise’s nightmare, sprung the impetus behind our first peepshow artists’ book, How will they know there’s no-one left, which we launched from our stall.
In said nightmare, an empty forest, in which no wildlife roamed, rootled nor had inhabited nor pollinated for a long while, was masked by AI simulations of wildlife inhabitants. Slowly it dawned on Louise, ‘someone’ or ‘something’ had been chipping away at the edges, replacing the missing with projected versions of the former wild souls. Closer inspection, beneath the mirage, revealed a landscape devoid of rich, biodiverse life, and it was this idea, a subtle sleight of hand, which gave root to the abandoned stage you’ll find now in How will they know there’s no-one left. The full moon, at journey’s end, now crescent, yet still no rustle of wildlife, furred or otherwise.
As the red curtain fell away, we invited readers at the fair to peep through the central hole only to find the stage to be empty, and the set abandoned. True to the source, we had intended for this sensation to not be immediately apparent. There is, after all, a bewitching moon to gaze upon, and the sentient beings of trees. As we made this peepshow, we were thinking: how will we, any of us, know what we have lost, when entire ecosystems crumble beyond possible repair?
It was wonderful and inspiring to catch up with you again, @adalitax; Gloria and Peter; @bat_rescue_bayside and Paul; @zangriffith; Megan; Ceri; Craig; @nofrillsart; Judy; @the_dog_of_the_south; @artekhalpernlaurence; @weesnpoos; @snorkmaiden42; @0francypants; a bevy of current and former RMIT Artists’ Books and Print students; @catmary11, Robert and @hamuloid; @ironbark11 and Carroll; @morgannamagee; Helen; @sqjen; @pwmeehan2016; Kim; and so many, many more besides. (Perhaps you can spot yourself in the above?)
Thank-you for the invitation to plonk upon a cushion, beneath Kusama’s Dancing Pumpkin as part of the NGV Kids Pumpkin Storytime, with our tales of tails for all ages, NGV. Thank-you for the opportunity and support to do so, @__lifewithbooks and Sen. Thank-you, @pasadenamansions and @peterhaby, for minding our stall so expertly as we replanted ourselves temporarily in the pumpkin patch of little ones to read from our zines and artists’ books, and talk about bats, pollination, habitat and homes, possums, and how animals communicate. Thank-you to the families who met us there and enquired, ‘why do bats fly at night?’, ‘how do possums build homes?’
Thank-you to our beautiful stall neighbours, @tara_books, @ornate.gesture, and @m.33_melbourne.
We had ourselves a merry dance, and were chuffed to see our zines and artists’ books find new homes. It was a giddy sensation from start to finish, and we are elated that our peepshow book, in addition to being acquired by a private collector of (the rather niche) abandoned theatres, is now destined for the collections of Deakin University Library and State Library Victoria.
Paws crossed for the chance to do it all again next year.
Image credit: Detail from the cover of the Second International Antiquarian Book Fair, held at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, California, September 21–23, 1967, featuring exhibits by the Leading Antiquarian Booksellers of Eighteen Countries (printmaker: anonymous; in the collection of the Rijksmuseum).
