GIW Information
GIW Galleries
Photography and the Printed Image
THE HISTORY OF THE GRAPHIC INVESTIGATION WORKSHOP AND ITS ARTIST BOOK ARCHIVE.
The Graphic Investigation Workshop was initially instigated at Canberra School of Art by its former director, Udo Sellbach in 1978.
Petr Herel who was appointed Head of GIW in 1979, developed the workshop curriculum and lead the workshop throughout its 20 years of existence. Between 1979-1998, the workshop's philosophy aimed to build a firm basis for students personal artistic research and experimentation.
The four main and interrelated components in the workshop's curriculum were drawing, the printed image, papermaking and typography. Drawing was seen as central to the investigative process. This particular focus provided an ideal situation for the development of the Artist book in the workshop's practice.
A capacity to accommodate words and images made the Artist Book an ideal repository of ideas and provided students with an alternative space, where young painters, sculptors and printmakers met with poets and contributed to each other's artistic expression.
Regular weekly reading sessions of poetry and on philosophy, criticism, aesthetics and contemporary 20th century writing, introduced generations of students to authors like Henri Michaux, Wols, Alfred Kubin, Saint Paul-Roux, Aristotle, Rebelais, Jorge Luis Borges, Vladimir Holan, Pierre Albert-Birot, George Trakl, Gottfried Benn, Rainer Maria Wilke, Osip Mandlestam, Antonin Artaud, Jean Baudrillard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Giorgios Seferis, Dimitris Tsaloumas, Fernando Pessoa and many others.
The programme of visiting artists, master printers and editors from Australia and overseas to work with GIW students and staff, was an importrant aspect of the workshop's philosophy. It included the curating of visitors' exhibitions and the publishing of exhibition catalogues.
The Artist Book emphasis made the Graphic Investigation Workshop unique in Australia.
GIW COLLECTION/ARCHIVE OF THE ARTISTS' BOOKS AND LIMITED EDITIONS.
The Collection was founded by Petr Herel, Head of GIW at the beginning of the workshop's establishment in 1979. The first item in the collection dates from 1980. Since then 245 items have been gradually added to the collection, the most recent being in 1998. The items included in this collection were voluntarily donated to the workshop by the staff and students of GIW.
The present collection was exhibited for the first time internationally in France in 1990 at the Institute des Arts Visuels in Orleans. In 1994 in Washington D.C at the Australian Embassy and in 1995 in the Museum of Art in Le Locle, Switzerland. This touring exhibition finished with a major exhibition at the National Library of Australia in Canberra, 1996.
At the conclusion of 20 years of the GIW's existence, it was decided to transfer the GIW archive of Artists' books to the Australian National University's Rare Books Collection, situated in the Menzies Library at ANU, to facilitate access to future researches and a wider public.