C:/Ovid
C:/Ovid: Changing to Survive, 2022.
Artist book. 36pp. 300 x 214 x 10mm. Risograph prints on 200gsm Knight Vellum. Section sewn with a 270gsm ColorPlan wrapper blind-embossed with letterpress. Edition of 20 + 3 AP. Content, design and binding by CF, risograph printing by Alisa Croft, Pinch Press.
Produced during my Piscator Press residency at Fisher Library, University of Sydney, Feb-April 2022.
An article about this work was published in Imprint Summer 2022 vol 57.4, pp26-29
Winner, Northern Beaches Libraries Artist Book Award 2023
In the quiet contemplation of one of our many Covid lockdowns, my eye kept snagging on the ‘Ovid’ in COVID. Ovid’s Metamorphoses has many contemporary critics but it’s essential theme is change: attempts to survive under duress via transformation. It’s what we’ve done, and also what the virus has done.
I started making collages that mashed up objects and people: eyes looking out from objects, bodies with aerosol-inspired outputs. I also started keeping what I’ve dubbed my Covidex: a running list of overheard, found, and encountered texts about the Covid-19 era. This text reels through the years since 2020 indiscriminately, as the index to an imaginary book about our collective experiences. It rarely mentions dates; the alphabet is the only system that continues to make sense to me.
In this book, I kept adding to the list right up to the crunch point of having to prep for printing, and it was hard to stop. I wanted to use risograph for the images, which is essentially a cross between photocopy and screenprinting, having experienced it just before Covid-19 emerged, with the AGNSW Extra! Extra! project. I like the way risograph printing is colourful and messy — like old-fashioned comics. This wasn’t quite the project to be riotously messy (hold that thought, I’m brewing that project at the moment) but it was a fun way to work with something that has too many words to hand-set in letterpress in the time available.
The Covidex continues to grow on my computer and will continue to do so until something changes… at the very least until our case numbers dwindle dramatically. I’ll output the ‘final’ version in another form again, perhaps as a searchable e-book. In the meantime, this limited edition, very material artist book, full of whimsy, seriousness and incredulity, is a witnessing of a very strange time.
Photos courtesy of Sarah Lorien Photography. Sincere thanks to the amazing librarians, past and present, of the Fisher Library, USyd.
