Bruno Leti -survey artists books 1982 - 2003

Tour itinerary

The Victorian artist Bruno Leti has been making artists books since the early 1980s. This exhibition at Geelong Gallery from 22 March until 18 May virtually includes Leti's complete oevre in this meticulous idiom from the time of his residency in Italy in the early 1980s to the most recent work produced in Leti's Carlton studio twenty years later.

Bruno Leti, painter, print-maker and book artist, made his first artists book in 1982. Since then he has produced some fifty artists books with many conceived as editions and the largest of which runs to 1000 copies. Making these exquisite books has become part of Leti's regular art practice.

Of the forty-three books in this exhibition, nineteen encompass the work of six poets including John Shaw Neilson and Chris Wallace-Crabe. Leti's books reflect aspects of his past and current artistic practice.

Speaking about the exhibition, the curator Brian Hubber said that 'the viewer will be served up a feast for the eye, a personal and cultural vision of landscape and narrative presented with absolute clarity.' Hubber further notes how the books refer to the places of Leti's childhood and adult life, to his family and to his heritage, cultural references to both Australian and Roman history, to Indigenous politics and to the force of narrative'.

An artists book is defined simply as a book made by an artist, or a book made under the artist's direction. However, the definition of artists books is continually being modified in view of unexpected innovations by the artists themselves. Burno Leti's has used a large variety of methods and production techniques in making these artists books.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue designed by Leti himself, and with an Introductory Essay by the poet Alan Loney. Sponsored by Pitella Imports and Nelson Alexander, both of Melbourne.