University of Melbourne: Art Bound

Studio Practice: How the Book and Two Dimensional Works Inform Each Other

Angela Cavalieri

I am going to give you a summary of my artists practice accompanied by some images.

I have been making large hand rubbed linocuts for over 20 years. The imagery has been narrative based and frequently incorporates text. Specifically Italian text - which is my first language even though I was born here. The opportunity to make artist books came out of sharing a group studio, where one of the other artists, George Matoulas, is a bookbinder. Because my work at the time was focussed on story-telling and text, it was easy to make the connection between my main practice and making artist books. After collaborating and making a few artist books which used text and image in a traditional manner, I became more interested in exploring the book as a concept.

Quattro Pagine artist book - lino cuts & collage, 1999

The idea for the artist book Quattro Pagine came from a colloquial phrase from a story told to me by my father, which I then re-imagined in a book form. Quattro Pagine means 4 pages and when used in a particular context it can also refer to a few pages from our lives. Making Quattro Pagine was a complete challenge since I had to work with small scale works on paper and collage, as opposed to the large works on canvas I have been making. Quattro Pagine was completed in 1999 and was a turning point in the development of my later work.

Pages from Quattro Pagine, 1999

The focus was now on text as image rather than the reading and meaning of the text. From this came a series of work exploring the cycle of storytelling, listening and understanding, where I imagined the artist to be author, storyteller and audience. The following were made between 2000 and 2002.

Racconto - to tell or re-tell a story

Ascoltare - to listen

Sentire - to hear

Sentire Dire - to have heard said

Text is repeated, fragmented and overlaid and the text I used is derived from stories remembered, songs, literature and personal and religious texts.

Dialogo - dialogue

Sbaglio - mistake

Scritto - written

In 2003 I was very fortunate to take up a 3 month Australia Council residency at the British School at Rome. This was a wonderful opportunity that enabled me to have the luxury of time to research ideas and make contact and exchange dialogue with people in other fields, i.e. archeologists, historians, classicists, architects.

The British School at Rome, January-April 2003

As I wrotein the BSR catalogue essay:

"Rome, a city 'written over', reflects my work in its fragmentation and layering where written text has been overlooked, abandoned or lost, only to be rediscovered in the modern city. Being in Rome provided the opportunity to reinterpret language in a truly visual sense, capturing the fragments on my canvas from the circles and crosses of Rome's church architecture, its archaeology and art, and its literary culture..."

Crocifissione was inspired after seeing Caravaggio's upside down crucifixion of St. Peter in S. Maria del Popolo. The Latin inscriptions and the architecture of the many domes and buildings caught my eye as did the illuminated manuscripts I saw at the Vatican Library. I was so excited to be able to view several illustrated copies of Dante's Divine Comedy and also Piero della Francesca's notebook. These pictures I made in Rome using Dante's original Tuscan dialect and incorporating his 'circles' of the inferno with dome structures and Latin inscriptions. The Rome studio was a turning point for my work. As a result of this residency 2 artists' books were produced after my return.

The first was a collaboration with Peter Lyssiotis in 1316-, the year Dante apparently finished the Divine Comedy while in exile. After talking to Peter about Dante and Rome, we decided to make a book based on the idea of the 9 circles of the inferno. Peter wrote the original text and designed the layout of the book. I chose the appropriate text and colours to represent the text and made the linocuts. Then Peter re-wrote the fragments I chose from his original text. During this process we were in constant contact and discussion about the book. The book needs to be looked at and handled as a whole to make sense of it's structure and meaning.

The second book I made was INRI (on display on the 3rd floor of the Baillieu). This was based on some wonderful crucifixs I saw while in Italy. INRI is the Latin inscription that appears on many depictions of the crucifixion. This artist book examines the individual letters of the italian word 'crocifissione' (meaning crucifixion), which eventually appears as you fold out the pages. I find now that the artists books and the wall works inform each other and trade ideas with each other.

Now I am going to show some large scale works that have developed after the Rome experience:

Imbuto - funnel

Doppia Croce - double cross

Installation shot at Ovens Street Studios, Melbourne, 2004

Buco - hole

Narratore - story teller

Dopo la Commedia - after the comedy - which incorporates the 3 parts of Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio & Paradiso

La Gloria di colui - the first sentence of Dante's 'Paradiso', incorporates a DVD projection of my linocuts of text and clouds moving across the hole in the dome

Installation shot - La Gloria di Colui and INRI, Counihan Gallery, Melbourne, 2005

Scripta Manent - comes from a Latin proverb 'Verba Volent - Scripta Manent' - spoken words fly away while written words will remain

Luce - based on Bramante's famous Tempietto (little temple) in the Church of San Pietro in Montorio in (Trastevere) Gianicolo.