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| Coastal inspired collection, WAYMARKERS exhibition, Toni Hartill |
This collection of artist's books was exhibited as part of my solo exhibition
WAYMARKERS ~ Into the Unknown.
Please visit my earlier post to view a tour of the full exhibition.
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| Coastal inspired collection, WAYMARKERS exhibition, Toni Hartill |
Tin-can Dioramas
these tiny worlds are created to engage a childlike imagination
Approaches to Auckland
Tin-can diorama.
Round tuna can, chart, hand printed papers.
Salt Spray II
Sea Air
Trig
Acrylic hill with trig.
Found weathered acrylic
shape, florist wire, card.
A familiar feature on many a
headland, where we would scamper, barefoot, up a slippy-slidey mud track to the
windswept tops and glorious panoramic views. Trig beacons are a marker of
times, places and of people in my life including both of my parents and maternal
grandfather, all surveyors, and scamperers in their time.
Depth in Metres
Original tin can structure.
Tuna cans, old charts, ink, ribbon.
for making a larger work called Vitamin Sea.
The structure was designed to challenge ideas around what an artist book could be.
It also indulged my enjoyment of creating tiny dioramas.
Vitamin Sea
Inspired by a trip to the Cavalli Islands, off the
Northland coast, I wanted to express how the restorative effects of going to
sea are so revitalising it should be canned and marketed. The “book cover”, inspired by retro food tin designs, espouses the health benefits of the contents while a found
verse perfectly sums up my own connection to the sea. Inside the actual artist book are a
week’s supply of smaller cans, the “pages” or “chapters” of the “book”. Each
one reveals a new vista and experience at sea, like a visual diary or a ship’s
log. Each vista tells a story of a time and a place.
The structural inspiration for the original artist book reflects on the
canned food rattling around the bilges of a boat, weathering over time until,
when they are eventually eaten, they taste oh so good, strangely far better
than they might if eaten in the comforts of home. Simply being at sea is
nourishment enough.
Migration ~ Mini & Maxi versions
Inspired by a tiny exemplar of
this structure while doing a workshop tutored by Beth Serjeant, I began
experimenting with using a mould to make shapes out of handmade paper and
consequently made a LOT of circles of various sizes. It then took a while for
inspiration to strike, and for suitable parts to be found, to turn the blank,
basic structure into a piece with a story or purpose. Once the idea hit,
however, the piece evolved quickly and was a lot of fun to create, engaging my
childlike pleasure of old-school toys.
**“When the structure is right for the text and images it
falls into place and practically designs itself”
**quote from Woven and Interlocking Book Structures by Claire Van Vliet and Elizabeth Steiner.
Maxi Migration: NFS
Mini Migration: SOLD
Whangaroa
Continuous Turkish map-fold.
Old map, collage, watercolour,
cotton ribbon, found box.
An old (imaginary) seafarer’s map folds
away into its protective box.
Wanting to keep the main area
of the map intact I created this Turkish map-fold structure from a single piece
of paper rather than individually cut sections. This allows the structure to
open lengthways rather than pivot around a central point.
SOLD
Purchased by Auckland Libraries for the Angela Morton Room Special Collection.
North Cape
Explosion book.
Old chart, collage, watercolour,
found box.
This explosion book is made
from a single piece of paper for the main structure rather than a series of
individual overlapping squares which would have obscured areas of the map.
I like the idea that a bulky
map could be magically folded into a pocket and vice versa, that something
small and contained could be opened out to reveal something unexpected.
SOLD
Purchased by Auckland Libraries for the Angela Morton Room Special Collection.
Manawa themed pieces
My fascination for seed pods, especially the native mangrove, Manawa, was the starting point for this series of drypoint images created for an earlier body of work. I developed sketches I had made of seeds washed up on my local beach and was much amused by their characterful poses.
These images have also appeared in an earlier edition of artist books I created in 2019 called Field Notes, one of which now resides in the Auckland Museum special collection, and one in the Auckland Libraries’ Angela Morton Room special collection.
Manawa Seedlings, various
Drypoint, watercolour, Hahnemuhle paper.
Manawa Journal
Concertina book.
Drypoint, watercolour, collagraph, book board, ribbon, stitching.
complete with the artist’s tools.
Remanent NFS
Repurposed board book.
Multiple printmaking
processes, found ephemera, offcuts and scraps.
This book evolved out of a
desire to repurpose some small, unframed artworks of varying shapes and sizes. Initial
ideas began with the loose concept of a structure that would allow the pieces
to appear as if forming a collection of treasured scraps and ephemera, jammed
into, and spilling out of, a well-thumbed journal or logbook, belonging to an
imagined hunter-gatherer. The title of the book emerged serendipitously as a
scrap torn from an old dictionary presented itself, aptly describing the
creation that had emerged.
solo exhibition Artful Naratives.
can be viewed in an earlier blog post HERE.
Thanks for visiting!
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