Join Dr Caren Florance as she takes us on a journey through her recent creative-arts research; exploring the spaces between artist books, text art and visual poetry.
Abstract:
I have long worked within the overlapping spaces between artist books, text art and visual poetry, testing outcomes that can be sent into any of these fields and engage with their particular concerns. In 2018 I was awarded a UC Donald Horne Creative & Cultural Fellowship (by the Centre for Creative & Cultural Research, CCCR) which allowed me to build on the understandings developed in my doctoral exegesis about the concepts of the open work, print-performance and material poetics. My latest body of work stems from a deep dive into misogynistic online culture, where, inspired by a body of feminist work produced in the 1990s by artist Emma Veal, I compiled a glossary of language used by various levels of men’s activism. These words and phrases are used in contemporary attacks on women, communications that seem immaterial and fleeting on page and screen but sink deep into the psyche. I used processual creative strategies to materially subvert the impact of such language through physical systems of abstraction and redaction. This seminar will report on my fellowship, sharing this work and other outcomes. I am very grateful to the CCCR for the opportunities that this fellowship opened up.
Short bio note:
Dr Caren Florance is a typographic and bibliographic artist and writer who currently lives and works in Canberra, Australia. She currently teaches in the School of Design and Built Environment at UC and in the Printmedia & Drawing Workshop at the ANU School of Art + Design.