Brilliantly Fair
Twelve, at last
Melbourne Art Book Fair
Great Hall, NGV International
180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne
Friday 15th May – Sunday 17th May, 2026
The bustling, thrumming, buzzing twelfth Melbourne Art Book Fair (MABF) is over for another year. And in a case of ‘this time last week, really?’, let us rewind the clock, turn the calendar back, and leaf through tomes once more in the glory of the Great Hall’s twinkle.
This year, from our stall, number 25, at MABF, presented as part of Melbourne Design Week, we released into the wild our artists’ book, Can we dream it? enquired the lantern bugs, and our folded paper mountain zine, The line between earth & sky.
Our new artists’ book, a variation of our unique-state artists’ book currently being exhibited as part of Entanglements with Fungi: Life, Death and Renewal, for the lantern bugs to shine. And the new zine was inspired by Sarah Bodman’s recent World Book Night prompt. We’d hope to take part in all things Mountain, so this, in effect, is our late submission. A double-sided mountain that appears from the twists and folds in the page with the confident flick of a wrist.
To the sounds of pages turning, and necks craning, our first day at MABF, pictured below, alongside the previous day’s install, was a beautiful affair. Thank-you to everyone who swung by our stall, leafed through a zine, purchased an artists’ book, chatted about bandicoots, ringtails, and more. It felt good to be back.
Day two of MABF and another fine, fine day in the handsome and colourful, inquisitive and intelligent company of fellow stallholders, punters, book enthusiasts, gallery hoppers, passersby beneath the Leonard French stained glass, friends, new faces, and more. As ever, a delicious gallop. Perhaps you can spot yourself in the assorted photos below.
Should you have missed coming along in person, you can purchase a copy of Can we dream it? enquired the lantern bugs through our online store. Presently, The line between earth & sky will join the ranks. As will our three remaining boxed set of zines from 2022 to 2025.
As ever the list of thanks is long. Thank-you for having us, @ngvmelbourne, @__lifewithbooks and @senvanderzalm. Thank-you to our stall neighbours, @sarahthefirth and @taisnaith, and fellow stall holders, @m.33_melbourne, @sticky_institute, @melbphotobookcollective, @binatangpress, @ritual.press, @mestizx_lab, and @ornate.gesture. Thank-you to everyone who stopped by our stall to chat about binding techniques, Tawny frogmouths and ringtail possums, the impossibility of softness that is a Krefft’s glider, mycelial networks, the word staffage (meaning, accessory items in a painting, especially figures or animals in a landscape picture), and just how do you fold a paper mountain. Thank-you to students, past and present, and dear, so dear friends; thank-you for the chocolates, keeping us upright and zinging, @pasadenamansions and @peterhaby.
We’ve taken part in every single fair, and adore the intensity of the experience as a fan of books transforms into nectar for those passing.
What a ride! Lights out! Until it is time to do it all again.
The Melbourne Art Book Fair program continues.
Image credit: Theodore Henry Adolphus Fielding’s On Painting in Oil and Water Colours, Landscape and Portraits . . ., 1839
Theodore Henry Adolphus Fielding came from a large family that included five landscape painters. He was known for his large-scale paintings and for his many elaborate colorplate books. During his career, Fielding was employed both as a drawing master and as a master of aquatint. In the nineteenth century, Ackermann and Company was a prominent publisher of drawing and painting manuals for amateur and aspiring artists. These manuals disseminated the standards encompassed by the traditional school of British watercolor. The success of art manuals was in part due to the publisher's ability to illustrate the books using acquatint, an etching process, together with hand-coloring, in an effort to simulate actual watercolor washes.
— The MET
