‘Poetry film | film poetry lunchtime
filmmaker and artist colleagues and convened
screening’ Poetry on the Move
a small curatorium of three.1 The diagram
symposium, Canberra September 2016
overleaf shows you how the works emerged.
Ivor Paints Arf Arf – Arthur & Corinne CANTRILL – colour, sound, 16mm, 6:00 What I did on my nervous breakdown – b&w, sound, 2002; What to name your baby, colour, sound (excerpt), 1995; 13 Acts of Unfulfilled Love, 1997, colour, sound, (excerpt). Richard James ALLEN & Karen PEARLMAN, total 10:00 Viralysis – Jeff GIBSON – colour, silent, 2:20, 2016 Red Black – Ross GIBSON – colour, silent, 2:00, 2016 The Postman’s privilege - Samuel WATSON colour, sound, 2:20, 2005 Chasing the Moon – Owen BULLOCK & Rosario LOPEZ – colour, sound, 3:00, 2016 Dissonance - Dirk DE BRUYN - colour, sound, 8:00, 2016 Sixty Second Thoughts – Jo LAW & Ali Jane SMITH – colour, silent, 14:00, 20131014 At the end of the Hippo Wood – Gary WARNER - colour, sound, 5:40, 2016 Digital poetry – The required field; Nothing you have done deserves such praise; Mysterious Basement Machines of the Prairie – Jason NELSON – screen recording of activation of digital poems, colour, sound, 6:00. Various dates. Here I Sit – Alyson BELL & Sandy JEFFS – colour, sound 8:00, 1996 I Describe / Royal Park – STRANGE, CURHAM & HUMBLE – colour, sound, 1:20, 2016 Vitreous Syneresis – Caren FLORENCE & Sarah RICE – B&W, silent, 4:50
Some axioms emerged about my angle on poetry film from my crowd sourcing: Australia – I’m interested in practice here. It has ebbed and flowed but certainly the poetry film doesn’t have its own niche as it does elsewhere (Europe, UK). I have taken ‘the local’ quite literally, circling out from my immediate colleagues here in the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research and the University of Canberra. Dialogue – my interest is in poetry film | film poetry where there has been the chance for some kind of dialogue between the poet and the filmmaker, rather than a filmmaker just acquiring the rights to a poem. Intersection – rather than moving image as a response to poetry, I am curious about the intersection in form between the poem and the image.
Event and collaboration For me every time I watch a film, my experience of it is quite different. My mood, the setting (where I am, who I am with, the occasion), the delivery system (my phone, a
So how did this program come together?
television, a cinema screen) all affect my experience of the work.
Crowd curating
Curatorium of Richard Johnson, SoundOut Festival director, Peter Shaw, 1
Short for time, I have levied the crowd. By
AV conservator and myself. Curatorial acknowledgement due to Circuit Artists Film & Video NZ, Liquid Architecture, Mike Leggett, Richard Tuohy at Nanolab, Fiona Brook who convened PIFF 2011-13, Tamryn Bennett at The Red Room Company & Tara Morelos at dLux Media Arts.
this I mean I contacted film curator friends,
2
Indeed, over my life making moving images, I
a combination of image and text that is both
have made my experience of film as variable
independent and interdependent:
event a cornerstone. Among other things, I
... a number of avant-garde film and
make hand processed super 8 and 16mm
video makers have created a synthesis of
fragments. I use the fragments with old
poetry and film that generates
projectors to make live performance, mostly
associations, connotations and
with improvising musicians in a small but
metaphors neither the verbal nor the
global scene devoted to audiovisual
visual text would produce on its own.3
performance. So a key to this work is
Ieropoulos paraphrases Wees on how the film
collaboration.
poem emerged: poetry-film workshops
For me, this kind of performance is structured
organised in San Francisco by filmmaker and
around the event and the film acts as a kind of
poet Herman Berlandt were interested in both
rubble, a variable series of visual events that
the film poem as the twentieth century film
help the musicians ‘read’ the film. These
avant-garde understood it and a new
performances are not always interwoven, but
‘combinative form.’ Wees:
the intention to make something that is neither
... [this new form] expands upon the
a film performance nor a music performance
specific denotations of words and the
is always there.
limited iconic references of images to produce a much broader range of
So of course, I am drawn to what I see as the
connotations, associations, metaphors.
interdisciplinary space of moving image
At the same time, it puts limits on the
works where words and image are
potentially limitless possibilities of
interdependent.
meaning in words and images, and
There are many ways of talking about the
directs our responses toward some
poem film | film poetry. Most cogent for me is
concretely communicable experience…4
early career British academic, Fil Ieropoulos.2 He traces the film poem in the 20th century
Louise Curham
film avant-garde and then draws heavily on
https://www.tumblr.com/blog/poetryonthemovefilm
American experimental film scholar William Wees. For Wees in his essay, ‘The poetry film’ (1984), the poetry film genre arises from
Ieropoulos, F. (2010) . The Film Poem. PhD thesis. United Kingdom:
3
In Ieropoulos, F, BAFVSC. Wees, W, “Poetry-Films and Film Poems” LUX website, http://www.lux.org.uk retrieved in 5th March 2005, originally published in ‘Film Poems’ programme notes, April 1999. 4 Wees, W. (1984). ‘The Poetry Film’ in Wees, W & Dorland, M (eds.). Words and moving images: essays on verbal and visual expression in film and television. Montreal: Mediatexte, p. 109.
2
University of the Creative Arts, Kent. Ieropoulos, F. (N.d.). Poetry-Film & The Film Poem: Some Clarifications. British Artists Film & Video Study Collection (BAFVSC), http://www.studycollection.co.uk/poetry.html.
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Bio notes & thoughts from the artists
demystification and ‘non-slickness’.6
about the poetry film intersection in the
Corinne & Arthur Cantrill’s contribution
works.
to experimental film and Expanded Cinema in Australia is unparalleled. With
Ivor Paints Arf Arf (1998, 6 mins)
productions from 1969 here in Canberra
Corinne & Arthur Cantrill
(Harry Hooton) on through the decades,
This is one of a group of three-colour
they have made over 150 films. Until 2000,
separation films shot on high-contrast,
they published the influential Cantrills
slow-speed B&W negative film stock
Filmnotes covering international image
which results in more saturated, surreal
experimentation.7
colour amid zones of deep blackness. Ivor Cantrill is seen painting the Melbourne
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sound poetry group, Arf Arf. 5 Ivor
What I did on my nervous breakdown,
participated with Arf Arf on the recording
(2002, 1 min 20 sec); What to name your
of this live performance, saying “Get away
baby, (excerpt, 1995, 5 mins); 13 Acts of
blah shooter” at the start, and playing the
Unfulfilled Love, (excerpt, 1997, 5 mins).
violin later.
Richard James Allen What I did on my nervous breakdown
About Arf Arf
This work has existed in three very
Sound Poetry ‘band’ Arf Arf first emerged
different forms: for the page, for the stage
following an impromptu gig at Caulfield
and for the screen.
Art Gallery in 1985 when Marcus Bergner
The film is edited by long time
called Frank Lovece at twenty minutes’
collaborator and life partner Karen
notice to ‘do something, anything’ to help
Pearlman, and the timing of all the
him in a performance that was about to
elements coming together is critical. The
start. The subsequent show consisted of
image doesn’t state the text, it’s all in the
foot-stamping, yelping and microphones
subtext, it’s not “Oh, I love the tree”, and
being rolled along the floor, a modus
then you see a tree. It is quite playful in its
operandi that has only marginally evolved
relationship of the elements. Karen and I
since … [theirs was] a raw, punk ethos of
did a lot of work mixing poetry and dance OtherFilm ‘English as a second language’, http://otherfilm.org/english-asa-second-language-dirk-de-bruyn-and-arf-arf/ 7 Jones, S. [N.d]. 'Arthur and Corinne Cantrill', Scanlines http://scanlines.net/person/arthur-and-corinne-cantrill 6
Adelaide Experimental Art Foundation screening notes, May 2010 http://aeaf.org.au/downloads/aeaf_mr_duetto_may26.pdf 5
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in the 1980s and ‘90s. These were
13 Acts of Unfulfilled Love
experiments in hybridising rhythms and
This work is made from a poem as a script
associations of words and movement,
for a dance film. The poem is a series of
rather than re-interpretation or translation
vignettes dealing with one man's journey
of words to movement. Never: here’s the
through the memories, hopes, dreams and
gesture and here’s the word. It was always
projections of what his emotional life has
more elusive and lateral, not about the
been or might have been. The film uses
signifier and sign being the same. In a
the text in voice-over as the man’s
way, this film captures some of that whole
thoughts.
body of thinking.
Poet Richard James Allen has published
This work won awards at the Australian
nine of books of poetry, edited a national
Poetry Festival and the Zebra Poetry Film
anthology and combined a unique
Award in Berlin.
international career as a multi-awardwinning writer, director, choreographer,
What to name your baby
and performer. Former Artistic Director of
Karen and I were commissioned by SBS-
the Poets Union, Inc., he won the
TV to make a dance film and I wanted to
Chancellor’s Award for most outstanding
make it a poetry-dance film. It was at a
PhD thesis at UTS.
specific moment in time because Karen was pregnant with our first child.
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Making the work was a political decision
Viralysis (2016, 2 mins)
by Karen not to be shunted to the side
Jeff Gibson is an Australian-born artist
because she was pregnant. She wanted to
who is also Managing Editor of Artforum
put the politics of the family front and
magazine in New York City.
centre, to make a statement about motherhood and family in an era when
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these ideas had been co-opted by the
RedBlack (2016, 2 mins)
political right and were disparaged by the
Ross Gibson
left.
When Samuel Taylor Coleridge declared that poetry is 'the best words in the best
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order' he was thinking of words on a
(Beaudesert). His latest collection of
page.
poetry has just been awarded the 2016
But what now, with screens and animated
Scanlon Prize..."Love Poems + Death
programs so available? What if the best
Threats"....
word order is not only linear but also spatial (not only 2-D necessarily but also
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3-D potentially) and flickering and shifting
Chasing the Moon (2016, 3 mins)
in a temporal-cinematic pattern of
Owen Bullock &Rosario Lopez
emergence, submergence,
Some thoughts from Owen:
impermanence? What if the tempo of a
I was conscious of a moment in time and
poem was much more that the musicality
its dependence on past events. My
that used to lurk so covertly on the page?
responses to the video footage were based
Ross Gibson is Centenary Professor in
primarily on the moon as symbol. This was
Creative & Cultural Research at the
nuanced by what Rosario told me about her
University of Canberra.
journey as a romantic artist engaged in a relentless exploration.
/////////// The Postman’s Privilege (2005, 2 mins)
Some thoughts from Rosario: I am
Samuel Watson
thinking of the original idea of this video
Postman’s Privilege was an animatic
was to record a journey like a path that has
developed in 2005 with a small grant from
no beginning or end. The only
Screen Australia, one of a handful of
geographical reference that serves as a
animatics planned that followed the
guide to keep walking is the moon. The
journey of a struggling
moon as a metaphor of the female world,
writer. Unfortunately the Indigenous
as a guide and a companion
board of Screen Australia thought the
and an ineffable presence of the real
project unviable and the series was
world.
shelved.
Owen Bullock's publications include
Samuel Watson is a full time writer from
urban haiku (Recent Work Press, 2015),
Brisbane with honorable ancestry from
breakfast with epiphanies (Oceanbooks,
Germany and Black Soil country
NZ, 2012) and sometimes the sky isn’t big
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enough (Steele Roberts, NZ, 2010). He is a
between sounds, the spoken, the visual,
PhD Candidate in Creative Writing at the
and the text.
University of Canberra. His research
In his book ‘Discourse Networks’
interests include semiotics and poetry; line
Friedrich Kittler names ‘The Great Lalula’
and space; collaborative poetry; prose
by Christian Morgenstern as the first non-
poetry, and haikai literature. He won the
sense poem, so I became interested in
Canberra Critics’ Circle Award for Poetry
translating this poem into the visual. This
2015.
also fitted in with my idea of the flashback
Rosario López is an Associate Professor
as a visual artifact of a traumatizing real
at the Arts Faculty of National University
event, where so much is covered over,
of Colombia, Bogota. Earlier this year, she
unspoken, suppressed and apparent non-
was a Visiting Fellow at the Centre of
sense.
Creative and Cultural Research at the
A flashback for me can be a gesture, a
University of Canberra. Rosario’s work
sound or an image fragment. I have a lot of
has been shown in Colombia and abroad
such artifacts swilling around in my head
with solo exhibitions in Bogota, Mexico
and scratched on bits of film in my studio.
City and Sao Paulo. She has also
As usual, I became diverted by a whole
participated in international group
translation game, randomly selecting
exhibitions such as the 52nd Venice
fragments of soundtracks, playing them
Biennale, Musée National des Beaux-Arts
backwards etc, presenting fragments of the
in Québec, Fondation Cartier pour l’art
poem.
contemporain, Paris; and the International Center of Photography, New York.
But how does this swill get started and form into something? Usually its some real
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disempowering event that I try to get away
Dissonance (2016, 8 mins)
from, that takes me into this dissociative
Dirk de Bruyn
depressive space for which art functions to
This is a meandering text about some of
make sense of.
the contexts for Dissociation. I have a longstanding interest in sound
Working in the academy can at times be
poetry, and like to inhabit the gaps
emotionally draining, so the poem became
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about that liminal space in which we all
made a sixty-second video recording and
find ourselves and are all complicit in to
Ali, in Wollongong, wrote a six line poem
some extent, about some unspoken truth
worked as couplets in iambic pentameter
that we are all aware of but on-one wants
for each of the thirty days.
to, or can speak to. Such duplicities I now
Sixty Second Thoughts re-works this
experience more and more in these
material. The six line poems appear as
increasingly middle-class corporate
moving texts engaging the audience in the
situations and I fight back with my art. In
intimate act of reading in a public space
my office one night it emerged.
while the sixty-second videos offer views
Dirk de Bruyn has been creating film
of everyday occurrences from a stationary
works for over 35 years; mostly in the
camera. The work opens up windows into
hand-made, 'direct animation' mode. He
lives in two cities, two cultures, and two
also performs live with multiple
seasons. Food, play and family are distilled
projections of his films in a highly
while the complexities of dislocation and
embodied mode of expanded cinema
colonisation inform both streams of work.
performance. His work is renowned for its
Ali Jane Smith is a poet and critic. Her
intricate, suggestive layering of sound and
chapbook Gala was published by Five
image, and use of sumptuous, blooming
Islands Press in 2006. In 2015 her poem
fields of colour. He is at Deakin University
‘Another literary life’ was selected
in the Centre for Memory, Imagination and
as Australian Poetry Journal’s Poem of the
Invention.
Year. She has had work published in journals such
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as Cordite, Southerly and Mascara
Sixty Second Thoughts (2013-14, 14 min)
Literary Review. She also reviews poetry
Jo Law & Ali Jane Smith
for The Australian, and has written essays
Sixty Second Thoughts extends from a
for online and print publications.
previous collaborative project
Jo Law’s work focuses on the
http://sixtythoughts.tumblr.com/ which
transformative relationship between art and
was a correspondence between an artist
technology, drawing from philosophic and
and a writer. During December 2013 to
scientific enquiries to investigate
January 2014, Jo, located in Hong Kong,
materialist practices and processes. Her
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recent projects A World of Things
essence of birds’ multifarious voices - their
(2015), The Illustrated Almanac (2011-
‘whistles’. But in the margins of these
4) examine how cartographic methods and
recordings, in addition to her dulcet
imaging technologies shape the way we
recitation of descriptive data, she
make sense of our world and ourselves.
sometimes spoke, as many bird-lovers do,
Jo’s works have been exhibited across
of marvelous or mundane encounters with
Australia and in international programs
her avian ‘friends’, their mysterious
such as Both Sides Now 2 (2015) which
behaviours and frustrating indifference to
toured cities in Britain and China.
human imperative. She captured, unconsciously, her own self-essence, and
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the listener hears her bubbling curiosity,
At the end of the Hippo Wood
the whirring workings of her utterly human
(2016, 5 mins 40 secs)
need to know, the excitement of
Gary Warner
transformative implication offered in the
How do we seek to know other families of
technological ’capturing’ of Bird’s sounds,
sentient beings? For example, birds. The
and sometimes the melancholy of
scientist, through the shameful necessity of
isolation.
millions of ‘skins in the museum’; the
I’ve experimented here with perceptual
poet, through existential mutualism.
agitations arising between the hearing of
Scientist and hunter share this maxim - to
disembodied spoken words and their
eat a bird, a bird must first be killed. Poet
simultaneous representation by image or
and shaman share this maxim - to hear a
text. Photographic images referentially
bird sing, a bird must first be alive.
speak to us of the realm of actual things
This film-poem (respectfully) explores the
while the utterance-cutup wanders the
affect sound of one recorded human voice,
immaterial realm of language teetering
that of Jennifer Horne (d.2008) who was
between sense and nonsense on the
born in Kenya and devoted her life to the
scaffold of alphabetic determinism. An
scientific
oscillating space of answer/question,
study of birds. In the mid-20th century, she
image/word, knowing/unknowing is
was an early adopter of cumbersome audio
opened, until, very soon, again, ‘it is
recording technology to capture the sonic
merely a little later in time’.
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merging/melding mix of fluid events and Born in Brisbane, Gary Warner has lived
inspirations. But with all my digital poems
and worked in Sydney since 1981. He's
there is one commonality, the emphasis on
been an artist and art worker in the cultural
interface. Rarely do I even reuse interfaces,
sector for almost 40 years with a self-
and when I do it is only as one section of a
taught background in experimental
larger work. This continual drive to create
filmmaking, visual arts, photography,
new ways to rethink the structure,
music and sound art, digital media
organization and interactive functionality
production, natural sciences, poetry and
of my digital poems comes from a variety
buddhism. Gary has been involved in
of internal influences. Most importantly is
seminal experimental screen and media
how these interfaces are not just vessels for
arts in many ways: at the Australian Film
content, they are poems in themselves. In
Commission between 1985-93, the
the same way digital poetry might be best
watershed International Symposium on
defined by the experience, rather than a
Electronic Art in Sydney in 1992; and he
description. Or similar to a digital poet and
has assisted institutions all over the
their works being described by the events
country to explore multimedia in
and stories surrounding the creation and
exhibition. Recently, he has been
building process, an interface is the life,
concentrating on re-establishing his solo
the body, and a poetic construction in
art practice, and on collaborative projects
itself. 8
with contemporary artist colleagues.
Jason Nelson says being a digital artist and writer allows him to break things, to
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rethink all manner of technologies, gizmos
Secrettechnology.com digital poetry
and interfaces. Everything, from the
(various dates, 6 min)
images to sounds, the movement and code,
Jason Nelson
the machines and interactivity become
Some thoughts on digital poetry: It is
texts for poetic play.
overly simplistic to state that my digital
Jason teaches Digital art and writing at
poems come entirely from
QCA, Griffith on the Gold Coast and has a
building/discovering interfaces. Any
global audience for his artworks. He has
artist’s creative practice is a
Nelson, J. [N.d.] ‘Digital poetry introduction’, accessed 10 Sep 2016 from http://heliozoa.com/?p=125#more-125
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been a winner and finalist in several
immediately taken by the words as they
Australian and international electronic
conjured up the most vivid imagery for me
literature awards. He is currently on a
and so I bought the book Poems from the
Fulbright Fellowship in Bergen, Norway.
madhouse that day. Although I religiously read all the poems, I just couldn’t get past
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the first page and that first poem Here I Sit,
Here I Sit (1996, 8 mins)
so I rang the publisher to make contact
Originally from the UK Alyson Bell
with Sandy Jeffs and ask permission to use
trained in design, fine arts and film. She is
it as the basis for my film.
now a practicing multi-disciplinary artist
I come from a graphic design background,
with video often being a major component
so using the words of the poem visually as
in her work. In 2015 she won the Kennedy
opposed to a voice- over, was the obvious
Prize with the video installation Never-
choice for me.
ending tide and is currently working on
Here I Sit was shown all over the world at
BiRD a 3 screen Video Installation of
various International Film Festivals
charcoal & photographic animation
including Venice, was nominated for an
combined with sound & poetry.
AFI Award here in Australia, screened on
Here I Sit is a visual interpretation of the
SBS and has been used by various
poem by Australian poet, Sandy Jeffs,
Psychiatric University Faculties around the
exploring the complexities of the mind and
world to educate students on
the emotions of schizophrenia. It combines
schizophrenia.
hundreds of layers of film (super 8 & 16mm) and video, typography, old
///////////
engraved diagrams, hand painted textures,
I describe/Royal Park (2016, 1 min 20
music and sound.
secs) Strange, Curham & Humble
Just out of film school, I’d decided that I
From: Louise.Curham
wanted to make a film incorporating poetry
Sent: Monday, 2 May 2016 2:09:16 PM To:
but wasn’t too sure where to start. But as
Shane.Strange
luck would have it, I happened to hear this
Subject: Re: How's about this one?
wonderful poem on the radio. I was
Hi ya Shane
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Exciting. Thanks so much for making this all
Peter Humble works and teaches across
possible. This is going to be a very interesting
the fields of film, video, music &
project.
photography. Moving back and forth
I waited til last night to read this so I had nice
between image and sound, he is concerned
clear head space. I really like your words. On first read they do exactly what I hoped – take the
with the meeting place of musical intuition
image somewhere but not necessarily a specific
and moving image exploring both narrative
somewhere so the audience has the job of
and more contemplative video art practices
finishing the work. I’ve been wanting to work
as well as being actively involved in
with poets for a long time for this reason.
finding new ways of making work outside
I’ll put the words with the images and we can see
the confines of traditional script based
how it flows.
approaches. In his work, the photographic
Shane Strange is a lecturer and tutor in
emulsion and the audio recording standing
writing and literary studies. He is a writer
in for a specific time and place. Originally
of essays, short fiction and creative non-
trained as a musician, a kind of musical
fiction who has been published widely in
thinking underpins his work.
Australia. In 2014, he was a contributor to, and co-editor of the book Creative manoeuvres: writing, making,
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being (Cambridge Scholars Press).
Vitreous Syneresis (2016, 4 mins, 50
Between 2005-2008 he was a regular book
seconds), Caren Florance & Sarah Rice
reviewer for The Courier Mail. A key
Thoughts: I was planning to make a book
project of Shane’s is Recent Work Press, a
that mapped the entire life of a poem by
small press imprint based in Canberra,
Sarah Rice, from its first spark to the
publishing poetry, short fiction and non
published version, somehow integrating all
fiction, and other short-form textual
the proofs and scribblings. It was a
experiments.
complex idea, and I decided to map it out
Louise Curham is currently a PhD
as an animation. Suddenly the book idea
candidate working on the intersection
seemed too static, and this managed to do
between heritage, performance and
everything I’d thought about. It is usually
archives. Her work includes making
shown on an iPad, mounted as one element
moving image, tending archives and re-
within a grid of digitally-altered static
enacting 1970s live art.
images.
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Caren Florance, aka Ampersand Duck, is
processes in contemporary contexts. Caren
an artist whose work focuses on the book
works in the ANU Printmedia & Drawing
and the printed word. She uses handset
Workshop and at the University of
letterpress and and other traditional print
Canberra where she is a doctoral candidate.
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