Bookworks by Lyn Ashby

I used to carry a small French language dictionary around in my back pocket when I was too young to know what this resource really was. I simply loved the idea of having a book, a small portable book, available at all times, that I could refer to whenever the fancy took me that would somehow offer me insight into my present experience, and, by referring to another or bigger world, translate it into something both exotic and useful. The artists' books presented here are made in this same spirit of mystery and transformation. For subject matter, I have ventured from that first linguistic equation, but then again not so far that I am not still seeking some insight and transport from an occasional present participle.

The books you find on this site are, with one or two exceptions, hand-made in a limited-edition of 50 and are for sale. I offer them as a tribute to the fascination with books and their endless relevance and application to the real life, and the translation they make possible. In 2018, some of these books will also become available in (more inexpensive) open-edition, Indigo and/or Print-on-Demand versions.

For more information, prices and purchasing details, click Contact.

For those who are interested, I have a PhD (Studio-based, arts research) from Monash University in Melbourne (DECODEX: Artistsbooks and Postliteracy). I have also gained qualifications from the London College of Communication (Master of Arts, Typo/Graphic Studies), the Victorian College of Arts (Graduate Diploma in TV/Film), the Sydney College of Arts (Bachelor of Visual Arts — Photography), Adelaide University (Bachelor of Arts — English Language and Literature). As well as this, I have won awards in film (FFICS, Tokyo for the animated film Under the Weather), in photography (Lady Fairfax Award for Photography, open section, for Peripheral Vision), been awarded the Southern Cross University Acquisitive Artists’ Book Award (for The Ten Thousand Things), and I have received several grants from the Australia Council for the Arts.

My works are held in several international and Australian collections, including the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Tate Britain (London), The University of the Arts (London), The New York Public Library, Carleton College (Minnesota), Bibliotheca Librorum Apud Artificiem, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Library of Australia, most state libraries of Australia, Melbourne University (Baillieu) collection, Artspace Mackay and Southern Cross University and Monash University artist's book collections.

In 2016 I was a Siganto Research Fellow, enquiring into the nature of narrative in artists' book, using the extensive collection of artists' books in the Australian Library of Art at the State Library of Queensland. You can read blogs written as part of that Fellowship at Blog1, Blog2, Blog3. This research was summarised in a talk presented at the library and subsequently published in an article in The Blue Notebook 2017, by the Centre for Fine Print Research, University of the West of England, Bristol.

For more information about me or my work, please visit some publications by me or about my work:
• An article in IMPRINT magazine first published in 2011.
• An interview with me first published online by
CODEX Australia in October 2012.
• A talk that I presented at CODEX Australia Symposium,
in 2014.
• An article published in the Journal of Artists' Books, JAB39, published through Columbia College, Chicago, in 2016.
• The Blue Notebook article about my research at the State Library of Queensland, published by the CFPR, UWE in 2017.
• An article reviewing one of my books
in Verso magazine, published in 2018.
• CV (Sept2020)

Please feel welcome to contact me with any queries or questions.