Exhibitions
Forthcoming Exhibition
Adventure & Art
the fine press book from 1450 to 2011
an exhibition at the Baillieu Library
the University of Melbourne
March to May 2012
Leigh Scott Gallery, Level 1, Baillieu Library, 1 March to 27 May 2012
Adventure & Art, curated by poet and fine press printer Alan Loney, is about the printer’s craft, evidenced from the first printed books in the 15th century, and given a hugely influential impetus by William Morris and the Arts & Craft movement at the end of the 19th. This exhibition will show how a number of technologies that are obsolete in commercial terms are still current in creative & craft terms in the 21st century. Exhibited will be books from the Baillieu Special Collections from Europe, North America, New Zealand and Australia.
A Symposium discussing the nature and definition of fine press books will be held from 2-5pm on March 9th 2012 in the Leigh Scott Room in the Baillieu Library. Each of the speakers at this Symposium, has arrived at the fine press book in different ways. It is hoped that the Symposium will inform as much as interest and delight those who see the exhibition and attend the day's discussions.
Speakers at the symposium are Alan Loney, Andrew Schuller, Peter Vangioni, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Carolyn Fraser and Caren Florance.
To book, go to http://go.unimelb.edu.au/6pb
Symposium speakers
Chris Wallace-Crabbe
Chris Wallace-Crabbe AM has a worldwide reputation as poet, while his most recent books of verse include Telling a Hawk from a Handsaw and the forthcoming New and Selected Poems. He chairs Australian Poetry Limited and is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne. Also a public speaker and commentator on the visual arts, he specializes in ”artists’ books”, and all that they might mean. Read It Again, a volume of critical essays, was published in 2005. Among other awards he has won the Dublin Prize for Arts and Sciences and the Christopher Brennan Award for Literature.
Caren Florance
Free-falling through the space left by the demise of Australian private presses, Ampersand Duck is an art-oriented letterpress imprint that produces work across the spectrum of book arts and fine press work. Based in Canberra, Caren Florance prints independently or collaboratively, sometimes jobbingly. Her particular area of interest is technological obsolescence and re-purposing. Caren has studied visual arts and English.
Alan Loney
Alan Loney’s first book of poems was published in 1971 and he began printing in 1974. He was co-winner of the poetry prize in the New Zealand Book Awards in 1977, Literary Fellow at the University of Auckland in 1992, and Honorary Fellow of the Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne 2002-2006, and Convener of the Conference on the History of the Book in New Zealand at University of Auckland 1995. He also received the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award for Poetry in 2010. Loney has published 11 books of poetry, and eight books of prose with a recent emphasis on the nature of the book. His latest book of essays, The books to come, was published by Cuneiform Press in 2010. He will be one of six international speakers at the Codex Symposium in California in 2013. His latest press is Electio Editions.
Carolyn Fraser
Carolyn Fraser is a Melbourne-born letterpress printer and writer. In 2005, after eleven years in the US, she shipped a 20ft. container of letterpress equipment to Melbourne and re-established Idlewild Press in the Nicholas Building. She has published three titles under the Idlewild imprint: Seventeen Reasons, The Extinguishing of Stars and Envelope. Seventeen Reasons was the recipient of a Rounce & Coffin Club Award for Book Design in 2000. These fine press books are in national and international collections, including the State Library of Victoria, the New York Public Library, Yale University and the Library of Congress. In addition to publishing artist books, Carolyn teaches letterpress printing and is a regular contributor to Uppercase.
Andrew Schuller
Andrew Schuller is a retired book publisher. He worked for Oxford University Press in Oxford for over 30years, is a member of the Oxford Guild of Printers and occasionally prints under the WordWynker Press imprint. He now lives most of the year in Canberra, where he spends some time as a publishing consultant and researching private presses in Australia and the impact of digitization on scholarly publishing. He has delivered papers at the conferences of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand and the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing.
Peter Vangioni
Peter Vangioni is a curator at the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu and has curated exhibitions on Ralph Hotere, Petrus van der Velden and British modernist prints from the mid 20th century. In recent years he has been instrumental in establishing the acquisition of artist's books for the Gallery's collection. He has a keen interest in hand printed books and operates his own private press, the Kowhai Press, from home.
Current Exhibition
Online Exhibitions
Romance or Pulp Fiction? It's Your Choice
The Facsimile and the Manuscript
Art Bound: A Selection of Artists' Books
Sensational Tales: Australian Popular Publishing 1850s-1990s
To all the Little Masters and to all the Little Misses: The Morgan Collection of Children's Books
Past Exhibitions
Banned Books in Australia
Baillieu Library, 7 June to late August 2010
Melbourne has a long history of banning books (both Australian and imported; past and modern) that reflects the transience of social norms and community values.
The exhibition hopes to highlight the complexity of the state’s role in policing the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable publications, and how Australian publishers have deliberately challenged the authorities. The exhibition incorporates books from the University of Melbourne collections and private collections as well as artists' representations of this theme
This exhibition will coincide with the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand’s Annual Conference for 2010 titled ‘To Deprave and Corrupt: Forbidden, Hidden and Censored Texts’ to be held at the State Library of Victoria. A complementary exhibition will also be held at Monash University.
http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/special/exhibitions/bannedbooks/exhibition/
Wilson Hall, centre and symbol
University, c.1888, Charles BristowWalker
Wilson Hall: Centre and Symbol of the University is an exhibition that aims to highlight the place of Wilson Hall within the history and minds of the University of Melbourne community.
Since the 1880s Wilson Hall has been the ceremonial heart of the University, serving as a venue for significant University occasions, including commencements, examinations and graduations.
The exhibition traces the Hall’s past, starting from its conception and the subsequent construction of the original gothic building in 1878-1882 with funds donated by Sir Samuel Wilson.
This Hall quickly achieved iconic status and inspired artists to portray the buildings majestic visage, which dominated the campus grounds until it was destroyed by fire in 1952.
The exhibition records this tragedy and the ensuing community response to the Wilson Hall Appeal Fund, demonstrating the emotional attachment people had formed with the building. This led to strong opinions in the debate of whether to restore the gothic ruins or re-build in modern style. It is here that the story of the “New Wilson Hall” begins and is subsequently explored through the narrative of its plan, construction and opening in 1956.
The exhibition draws upon the cultural collections of the University of Melbourne to provide a rich display of original architectural drawings, artworks, photographs and artefacts associated with the Hall.
Wilson Hall: Centre and Symbol of the University will be on display in the Leigh Scott Gallery, First Floor, Baillieu Library, from 15 March to 17 May 2010.
Write of Fancy: The Golden Cockerel Press
Ground floor, Baillieu Library, 17 August-26 September 2008
The exhibition Write of fancy, curated by Kerrianne Stone, explored the hearts and minds of the inventors, writers and artists of this British press which operated between 1920 and 1960. It showcased examples from the Baillieu Library’s exceptional collection of Golden Cockerel books, comprising the gifts of various individual donors and the Friends of the Baillieu Library. Examples included Eric Gill and Robert Gibbings’ collaboration on The four Gospels (1931), John Buckland Wright’s illustration of Endymion (1947), and maritime history books.
Golden Cockerel books achieved a visual harmony between content, typography and illustration. The exhibition is a chance to discover how this private press from its inception was a flight of fancy, and how through its words and images it became a ‘write of fancy.’
Murderous Melbourne: A Celebration of Australian Crime Fiction and Place
Leigh Scott Gallery, Baillieu Library, 10 June to 7 September 2008
Australia has nurtured many fine crime fiction writers over the years, starting with Mary Fortune and Fergus Hume in the late 1800s. However, the post-World War 2 years represent crime fiction’s ‘golden age’ in this country. The ranks of Australian crime fiction writers from this period include Carter Brown, S.H. Courtier, Geoff de Fraga, Charlotte Jay (inaugural winner of the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1954), Helen Mace, A.E. Martin, Margot Neville, Eric North, James Preston, Elizabeth Salter, Arthur Upfield and June Wright — to name but a few. More recently, Marshall Browne, Peter Corris, Kerry Greenwood, Barry Maitland, Shane Maloney and Peter Temple (winner of the UK Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award in 2007) have been widely acclaimed for their crime fiction writing.
The exhibition Murderous Melbourne featured items from the University of Melbourne’s extensive collection of Australian crime fiction. It also showcased work by third-year students of architecture and Master’s students of landscape architecture from the University of Melbourne, who have used Australian crime fiction as a tool for stretching the boundaries of creativity and design. The architecture students have designed a Centre for Australian Crime Fiction, to be located on the car park adjacent to the north court of the Union building. A major influence on their designs was June Wright’s 1961 crime novel Faculty of Murder, set in the University of Melbourne. The landscape architecture students have designed stage props for S.H. Courtier’s crime novels See Who’s Dying (1967) and Murder’s Burning (1967), both set in the Australian outback.
Cambridge Collected: The Pierre Gorman Story
Leigh Scott Gallery, Baillieu Library, 20 March to 30 May 2008
Cambridge in Prints and Books
Comprising close to 3000 items dating from 1568 to the present, the collection of books and prints at the University of Melbourne relating to Cambridge – the University and the town – may well be the most extensive outside Cambridge itself. The University of Melbourne since its establishment in 1853 has had strong links with Cambridge University and collected books on all aspects of Cambridge. The acquisition of Pierre Gorman’s collection in 1994 on the initiative of the then Collections Management Librarian, Juliet Flesch, was therefore a valuable addition to the University’s material and the additions since that time, mostly donated by Pierre Gorman, has made the University of Melbourne collection of Cambridge books and prints truly world class. Amongst the particular strengths of the Cambridge Collection are the guide books and the histories of the university and colleges, many of them illustrated by the foremost artists of their day. There are important black and white or colour illustrations in various sizes by notable artists including Loggan, the Harradens, the Storers, Mason, Dyer, among many others. The University of Melbourne Library is the only Australian library to possess the rare Loggan 1st edition (1690) and the even rarer 2nd edition (1715). A highlight of the collection is a splendidly illuminated 1662 heraldic manuscript depicting the arms of the Earls of Cambridge, the Chancellors of Cambridge University and the colleges of Cambridge University.
Dr Pierre Patrick Gorman (1924-2006)
Pierre Gorman was born in Melbourne as the only child of Sir Eugene and Marthe Gorman. After graduating from Melbourne Grammar and then from the University of Melbourne with a BAgSci in 1949 and a BEd in 1951, Pierre went on to study at Cambridge University, from where in 1960 he became the first deaf person to take out a PhD.
Pierre was totally deaf from birth but, through the dedication of his parents and teachers as well as his own willpower and intelligence, he learnt to master the spoken language and became an expert lip reader.
Pierre had a long and distinguished career in England and Australia as educator of the deaf and a tireless advocate against discrimination towards people with disabilities. After retirement from the Faculty of Education at Monash in 1983 he offered his large collections of books and prints relating to Cambridge to the University of Melbourne where they were acquired in 1994 and 1995 respectively.
Perhaps because he did not have a sense of hearing, Pierre came to be particularly interested in the visual arts. He collected in great depth all aspects of the history of the University and town of Cambridge, but especially prints and books relating to his beloved Corpus Christi College.
The books and prints in the Gorman Cambridge Collection at the University of Melbourne were collected over a lifetime and to the end of his life Pierre continued to collect Cambridge books and donate them to the University. He documented the Gorman Cambridge collection in an exhaustive bibliography which also includes books on Cambridge found in other parts of the University of Melbourne collections.
For his services to the University of Melbourne Pierre was awarded an LLD honoris causa in 2000.
Past exhibitions using the Cultural Collections of the University of Melbourne