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Dada had only one rule – Never follow any known rules: Akky van Ogtrop, Monica Oppen and Ron McBurnie

  • Artspace, Level 2, Seminar Room 206 43–51 Cowper Wharf Roadway Woolloomooloo, NSW, 2011 Australia (map)

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some are to be chewed and digested.
                                              'Bacon’s Essays', Francis Bacon and Richard Whately, 1857

Akky van Ogtrop is an art historian and independent curator and her most recent project is Paper Contemporary, an exhibition component of Sydney Contemporary. Van Ogtrop graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands, majoring in printmaking and has an MA in Fine Arts from Sydney University. As a director and  project manager of major arts events, she worked for the Biennale of Sydney, ARTiculate  Campaign, the World out West, and is the founder and Executive Director of the Sydney Art  on Paper Fair. She is an avid collector of arists books, zines and works of art on paper.

Monica Oppen is a book artist, printmaker and writer. She runs ANT Press, and has trained and worked as a hand binder with 20 years of binding experience. She has bound her own work and that of other artists. Her books are in public and private collections in Australia and overseas. Oppen is also a prominent collector of artists books and her library, the Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem, is accessible to the public by appointment.

Ron McBurnie works primarily in the areas of printmaking, painting and artist books. He has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions over the past 30 years and his work is represented in most Australian state galleries and the National Gallery of Australia. Based in Townsville, much of his work relates strongly to the tropical North Queensland environment but the artist also draws inspiration from traditions of British and European printmaking and painting. McBurnie is a lecturer at James Cook University in the School of Creative Art.

Image: Kurt Schwitters and Theo van Doesburg, Kleine Dada Soirée, 1922, lithograph, 30.2 x 30.2 cm. Courtesy Akky von Ogtrop