DIFFICULT MAJESTY

Images- Anthony Pelchen/ Text- Andrew Lindsay/ Design & Box-Anthony

Pelchen/ Printing- Alan Vickers/ Fabric cover- Lorelle Esmore

34 A4 pages, not bound

Injet prints on Hahnemuhle 308 gsm/ 100% Rag

Box: wood, acrylic, cloth; 73.5x30x6cm

Fabric cover, 148x89cm

2 Artists Proofs/ Edition of 4 (Unique State box/cover)

This book brings together 12 images by Anthony Pelchen and 12 pieces of writing by Andrew Lindsay. Both are drawn from daily responses to acute times – Lindsay was reflecting on the recent passing of his father and Pelchen on his recovery from major illness while staring out at a distressed land. With the initial images and writings made prior to meeting, both found a strange majesty in the difficulty of the time, with its overwhelming sense of a private drought – the aching absences of something that was previously so present.

Andrew Lindsay’s writings are from a bigger body of work, collectively titled The God of Morphine, initially developed under a Peter Blazey Fellowship at the Australian Centre, Melbourne University,2008. Anthony Pelchen’s images are from a series of 231 small gouache on paper paintings made over the year 2006/7. 

The collaboration began early in 2008. The book in its final form was completed in 2011.

(This collaboration was prompted by curator Lella Carriddi for the 2008 project Drought – Creative Cross Cultural Collaborations, presented in Melbourne at Federation Square / Australian Centre for the Moving Image/ National Gallery of Victoria) 

Presentations

2008

National Gallery Victoria, Ian Potter Centre

(Melbourne Writers Festival – Artists’ Book forum and installation/performance)

2009

Ballarat University Post Office Gallery,

(Exhibited as part of Drought – Cross Cultural Collaborations, curated by Lella Carriddi.

Performance and symposium panel discussion, Drought: Perceptions and Propositions - chaired by artist/academic Jill Orr, Post Office Box Theatre, University of Ballarat)

2009

Installation/performance Natimuk Frinj Festival

2010

Libris Awards exhibiton, Artspace, Mackay