Twenty-four: a compilation box of zines, 2015–2016 -

Wooden display box with sliding perspex lid, 325 x 425 x  42mm, containing 24 handmade zines by the two artists created in 2015 and 2016. Created in an edition of 5 boxed sets with hand lettered title card. This is set number 5. All the zines are initalled in pen by the artists. ‘We are besotted with paper for its adaptable, foldable, cut-able, concealable, revealing nature. In our artists’ books, prints, zines, drawings, and collages, we use an armoury of play, humour, and perhaps the poetic too, with intent to lure you closer. The animal is oft present and easily detectable, the centre of our paper stage. Hard to miss, over here and over there, the animal runs up hills, scales rooftops, and sometimes appears to take flight. Gliding through a scene it is too large to be contained within or perhaps too manmade to call home, that it has a tail or feathers or furred muzzle is not solely why its form appears. For us, the animal is there to question our very behaviour, those moral principles one governs the self by, and to explore our relationship with the natural world. The words of Gogol whisper in the ear, “the longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.” And so, we leave our scenes open-ended, inviting you to ponder and perhaps find that things are not always as they first appear.’ – Artists’ statement The contemporary artists’ books of Gracia & Louise are represented in the collections of Artspace Mackay; Bibliotheca Librorum Apud Artificem; Deakin University Library; Melbourne Museum; Melbourne University Library; Monash University Library; Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery; National Gallery of Australia; National Gallery of Victoria; National Library of Australia; RMIT University Library; State Library of New South Wales; State Library of Victoria; State Library of Queensland; Tate (UK); University of the West of England (UK). Three of the five boxed sets Twenty-four are held in the collections of the National Library of Australia, State Library of Victoria and State Library of New South Wales.