I was excited to be informed my artists' book on patriarchy had been accepted as one of the finalists in the Australia artists book award Libris. It is great to be accepted as a finalist in this highly prestigious national award; but I was also excited by the fact that this acceptance might give the book and its content the opportunity to be considered by a wider audience. The opening image shows the cover of the book with the title embossed on the cover - black on black.
The book (It won't dismantle itself) brings together two protest art forms (posters and public graffiti) to make a statement about the some of the repugnant features of patriarchy including the fact that it breeds bullies, it uses its power to maintain its control - including abuse and violence - note the graffiti blood splatter on the second image below. The book states that patriarchy has passed its use-by date - it needs to be dismantled but those who benefit from it have too much to lose so it won't dismantle itself - we need to take affirmative action to dismantle it. The book is A3 in size.
Following are a few images of the book.
As you can see from the two open pages above the interleaves of the book are embossed with the images that are graffitied over the letterpress posters.
I cannot stitch - so I asked Fiona to stitch this book - hence the form of the book is in part a collaboration. If you look at the spine you can see Fiona's excellent stitching with black waxed thread. I had reinforced all of the leaves of the book with black paper to support the single page binding Fiona was to do - from a design perspective this has resulted in a gorgeous spine.
The 9 graffiti stencils were hand cut as was the stencil for embossing the front cover.
