Exhibition Review: Visual Art | Brian Rope
“BEING PRESENT” and Perform Eight ACTs |
COOPER+SPOWART
Wangaratta Performing Arts Centre Foyer Gallery | 29 August – 4 December 2024
Being Present is the title of a conceptual and creative artists’ book by COOPER+SPOWART (Victoria Cooper + Doug Spowart). It comprises eight individual folios (or ACTs) in smaller foldout books. The book is displayed beautifully in the foyer of the Wangaratta Performing Arts Centre (WPAC) where it can be seen by everyone who passes through when attending art performances in the Centre, or anyone else who goes into that space. However, what is displayed is not what you would expect. It is actually eight framed works.
Where, you might ask, is the book? Well, it is a WPAC requirement that only framed works be shown due to the complexity of presenting off-the-wall art in that public foyer. As COOPER+SPOWART’s medium is artists books and photobooks with wall art to support them, they produced a mechanism whereby they could show an artists’ book in a very different way.
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| Being Present gallery Installation |
On didactic panels with the artworks are QR codes. Scan them with your phone camera and links take you to high-definition videos on the artists’ YouTube channel. Appropriately for a performing arts venue, each video is a performance of a particular ACT. Each ACT has a title. For example, ACT 5 is Mt Buffalo.
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| Act 5 Mt Buffalo |
The book was printed by the artists using pigment inks on Epson Velvet Fine Art Paper and Zerkall printmaking papers and bound in Stonehenge covers, with Kozo Kawairi interleaved papers and waxed linen thread. The quality is superb. The individual foldout books were each resolved, printed and bound by the artists in their studio. They are stunning. The marvellous clamshell box holding the eight ACTs, plus Introduction and Epilogue? Made by Spowart. Every carefully made element of this artwork is beautiful.
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| Being Present book+clamshell |
In addition to clever photography, there are excellent words – poetry if you prefer. “Where vibrations touch our minds.” Not only do these words speak deliciously, but they are also positioned appropriately over the imagery - yet another reason this project spoke to me of fulfilled art. Their abilities in their chosen art mediums enables these artists to reach many people.
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| Angophora Grove Walk parts 1–4-vert |
These accomplished artists say, “the performance and creation of the eight ACTS has set the stage for future visual books to share, through the haptics of reading and visual metaphors, a deep connection with narratives of place.” I, for one, look forward to their next books. As they say at the end of an article on their artists’ blog, WATCH THIS SPACE….
My wife and I were most fortunate to explore this exhibition in the company of the artists. Not only were we able to discuss particular works and ask questions about their approach, but we also had the opportunity to sit with the physical boxed book and turn every page of each ACT in the presence of the artists, talking with them about the artwork and their processes. Commitment to, and love for, their creative practice is clear from speaking with them as well as from closely examining the high quality of all they have created for this particular project.
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| The haptics of reading Being Present |
As we turned the pages, we saw smaller pages overlaid (using hand-stitching) on each full-size double page spread. The smaller pages also opened to reveal further imagery and words. Landscapes photographed by one of Cooper or Spowart are overlaid by photos of the same landscape taken by the other artist but including their partner taking the straight landscape shots.
If you are not able to visit the venue to see the exhibition before it closes, I urge you to explore everything on the artists’ blog here. In fact, even if you do visit the show, I am certain you will very much enjoy the blog piece and all the YouTube videos for which links are provided.
This review is also available on the author's blog here.