Boundless possibilities

Explores the expressive possibilities of linocut, combining bold physicality with spontaneous, immediate visual impact.

A playful exploration of what defines a book, challenging form, function, and the idea of “bookishness.”

Transforms everyday shopping bags into a playful artist book reflecting contemporary shopping culture and creativity.

An interactive folding book inviting exploration through Brazil’s iconic blue, yellow, and green.

A collaborative wooden artist book where form, text, and material celebrate the story of worm-eaten timber.

Celebrates Roman letterforms through sculptural embossing, exploring language, history, and the art of the book.

An experiential book exploring traumatic memory, inviting readers into fragmented recall and personal reconstruction.

A sculptural book shaped like a boat, reflecting refugee journeys and contested borders.

Star-like folded pages and textured covers create a sculptural book celebrating form, craft, and material detail.

A flowing concertina form tracing the 2011 Brisbane floods through imagery, structure, and shifting tones.

A playful handmade book shaped like iced cupcakes, featuring a stitched concertina spine.

Architecture and multilingual storytelling combine to reinterpret the Tower of Babel in book form.

The Australian Library of Art, held within the State Library of Queensland, is home to all manner of works that explore the scope of the human experience. One such work that has resonated with many researchers and viewers alike is Memory Loss, by Scott McCarney.

One of the structurally fascinating works in the Australian Library of Art Collection is known as the Tower of Babel. Created by Anne-Maree Hunter in 2006, this collection item invites the viewer to engage with it in a way that one does not usually associate with 'books' in the traditional sense. Colourful and spiraling in shape, the Tower of Babel, or 'Babel Book' as the artist described it herself, is a work that blends the boundaries between art and architecture, and both sides of its surface are printed with a veritable cornucopia of symbolism open to the viewer's interpretation.

The Australian Library of Art has acquired the first artists’ book for the collection which documents artists’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart collaborated with Julie Barratt and Solange Baques to create Artists Survey #23: Artists in pandemic isolation.

This month Normana Wight our guest blogger reviews Queensland artist Madonna Staunton's work 'A Movable Feast'.“A Movable Feast” AKA “The Trolley”A book to drive?Or “How to drive the book?”A user’s manual?An Objet d’Art?OR “The Trolley Song.” (clang, clang went the trolley)Instruction manual.Pick up the trolley in both hands; read the words facing you, then gently turn it to the right. Continue to read the next page, turn to the right again. Continue till you have absorbed the whole story (plot.)Return it to its garage.Close the door.Go home. (Or continue on your way.)Is it a poem?A story?A sculpture?The answer is entirely up to you.It is in fact, a poem. POEME CONCRETEIt is an object which is a sort of poem, anyway.Madonna Staunton has the gift of being able to throw casually, or place, a number of images together casually in a way that grasps your attention, often with a powerful philosophic meaning or reference. Thus sending you,( or me anyway) to a dictionary or encyclopaedia for explanation and revelation.This ‘book’ is constructed out of a number of disparate items – the solid wad of Chinese paper – the string – the baseboard. And the text: “Nothing Great Without the Good,” translated from the Latin.Check for more details in Madonna’s Ephemera file at The State Library of Queensland, on Level Four.Normana Wight October 2017

'1973' Paula QuintelaArtist & guest blogger Normana Wight has reviewed Paula Quintela's artist' s book 1973. The experience of viewing the work posed challenges that Normana did not anticipate!Nineteen seventy three, an artist’s book by Paula Quintela is a unique artist’s book, made in 2012 comprising aluminium slides, solar plates and collographs in a wooden box.This emotionally charged artist’s ‘book ’recreates the overthrow of democracy in Chile on 11th September 1973, through a series of 95 individual slides. The bloody murders are represented in the red slides, the mass graves in the brown slides, the missing in the absent slides and the impassioned speech of president Allende, just before he was murdered, in the text slides.A little bit of ‘Q and A’ here; does the viewing of the piece depend upon the accompanying photographs of the slides, laid out in order making a very beautiful 95 piece grid?It is a very emotional, but compact work, hinging on the horror and emotion of a child’s experience.Even the physical presence of the work has a brutal ‘do not touch’ look. The handsome traditional wooden storage box of slides, is set like a trap. You cannot extract them without cutting your fingers; you cannot view them because they are opaque; is the masking of the images some clue to the work’s meaning? It certainly adds a certain frustration!Normana WightJuly 2016

This land is your land, this land is my landSince its conception, the artist’s book has gone through many metamorphoses, allowing artists to widen their presence to places and people outside of the gallery. Contemporary artists’ books range from fine craft letterpress works to one-of-a-kind or limited-edition art objects, to political-based zines and comics.The Artists’ Books Collection held in the Australian Library of Art, is the largest publicly available collection of artists' books in Australia, and is recognised as one of the best in the country. A Roman Alphabet, Helen Malone, 1993The State Library has more than 1500 artists’ books in the collection and throughout June and July, you will be able to feast your eyes on a delicious selection of sculptural works and a selection of zines, by a variety of Australian and overseas artists. These works will be on display in the ALA Showcase, situated on level 4 of the library. Little Red Riding HoodAll artists’ books in the collection are catalogued on Onesearch and may be found there by searching “artists books”. (artists’ books & books about artists’ books) or “ALAAB” (locates artists’ books) Where copyright permissions can be obtained we are gradually fully digitising works from the Artists’ Books Collection.Featured artists:Sarah Bowen; Darren Bryant; Liz Deckers; Rebekah Evans; Louise Irving; Joanna Kambourian; Tim MoselyMargo Douglas, Jan Hogan, Kurt Schranzer, Karen Papacek, Helen Malone, Sherrie Knipe, Wim de Vos, Helen Sanderson and Guiseppe RomeoBook Artists on regular display in the ALA ShowcaseBernard Appassamy, Helen Sanderson, Klaus Zimmer, Adele Outteridge, Peter Rosman, Alex Selenitsch, Ronald King, University of Southern Queensland, Tafadzwa Gwetai, Arthur Azevedo, Annette Seeman, Stewart Scambler and Wim de Vos.You can sign up for a Library membership for immediate access to State Library's collections and services and enjoy a digital experience from home. Browse all digitised artists' booksJanette Garrad, Senior Technician, Published Content, State Library of Queensland.