Conference presentation
Surface and Touch: Narratives of the miniature, the gigantic
abbe 2025 Conference (Mackay, Queensland, 04/07/2025–06/07/2025)
06/07/2025
Metrics
1 Record Views
Abstract
This presentation aims to share insights into my ongoing artist's book practice and initiate discussions on how I continue to merge old and new print technologies to interrogate ideas surrounding 'the aura of the original'. This presentation highlights individual studio-based research interests in how artists' books can control how we read them. The formal structure of a book (physical or virtual) can control how we handle it and interact with its content, open and closed. I will discuss how I have adopted what Susan Stewart (1993), in her book titled 'On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection', analyses how everyday objects can be narrated to realise the world around us. Stewart explores the tension between 'here' and 'not here,' 'now' and 'then,' observing that when objects are removed from their origin and time frame, they can be defined as incomplete, generating a sense of desire and, in the case of a print copy, trigger a longing for the original. (Stewart,1993, p. 136). Recent books titled, 'The Time Travellers Manual (now and then), and ‘Trace’ (2025), will be focused on to provide evidence of how research in this project has moved away from a sense of the photograph as a container for holding a specific impression, or reliable document. This presentation will discuss how images and objects are never seen as a pure impression but are layered into the chemistry of the bookmaking process and printmaking studio, where the miniature becomes gigantic.
Details
- Title
- Surface and Touch: Narratives of the miniature, the gigantic
- Creators
- Darren Bryant - Southern Cross University
- Conference
- abbe 2025 Conference (Mackay, Queensland, 04/07/2025–06/07/2025)
- Identifiers
- 991013323528202368
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Business, Law and Arts; Creative Arts
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Conference presentation