Batavia (1629) notebook to the void
Title: Batavia (1629) notebook to the void
Year: 2017
Artist book in seven sections, digital cover, silkscreens, dry-point on copper on kozo paper, each folded page at 49x70cms
Imprint: trembling hands
Edition: 2. (each edition with unique folds)
This artist’s book was made to contemplate the experience of witnessing the excavation of a skeleton by an international team of archeologists on a remote tiny reef island 80 kilometers from the Western Australian coast near the city of Geraldton. The skeleton was barely discernable having been in a shallow grave cradled on a coral bed near the waterline of the Indian Ocean for close to 400 years. The skull had been pulled apart by birds which had nested in the victims chest cavities. The skeleton was one of many recently discovered between 2015 and 2017 through archeological expeditions carried out by the University of Western Australia “Shipwrecks of the Roaring Forties” Project (ARC Linkage Project LP13010013). One of the aims of this project is to illuminate the human story of the shipwreck of the Batavia, a Dutch VOC ship shipwrecked in this remote desolate location in 1629. Not long after this disaster through a complex network of events a mutiny ensued which led to the brutal murders of 125 men, women and children.
The book is comprised of seven folded sections each resembling a map. Most of the folded pages depict images of the deep indigo sea. One large folded sheet, which is printed on transparent Kozo paper, re-imagines the form of the human skeleton. Using drypoint, the scratchy lines retrace the human story. The book is a form of notebook and attempts to record the human form and story of the living environment from which the body emerges.
Exhibited: Batavia Giving Voice to the Voiceless, 2017 Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery and Batavia Giving Voice to the Voiceless 2018, Geraldton Regional Art Gallery and Encuentro, Impact 10, 2018, Santander, Spain.