AustLit

Designated the third part of the Botanikos Project, A Common Sense of Nature comprises colour photographs, colour illustrations and text by Oppen. The work is an artist’s book on the local environment of Sydney, while demonstrating the deficiencies of our language to pin-point the true beauty, complexities and eccentricities the natural world.

The seventh part of Monica Oppen's Botanikos project, From the City into Trees comprises images and graphics by Oppen, along with text extracts from Robert Macfarlane's The Wild Places (2007) and Tony Jupiter's What has Nature Ever Done for Us?: How Money Really Does Grow on Trees (2013). This work and the related work Night-Walker, were influenced by a hand drawn creation created by Oppen at art school in 1989.

This work is the sixth part of the Oppen's Botanikos project. Designed and illustrated (some illustrations coloured) by Oppen, the text extracts are from The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane (2007). Night-Walker and From the City into Trees were influenced by a hand drawn creation Oppen did while at art school in 1989.

This is the second book of the Botanikos project. The work covers the relationship between human philosophy/life and plants and the overall effect that nature has on the human life. Oppen produces photographs of botanic gardens and the sky, and uses select texts from Michael Marder's Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (2013) to explore human life's dependency on the ‘green world’.

Produced in the form of a clam shell box, Possession - Dispossession 'began with the painted book. The text is extracts from William Bradley's journal (A Voyage to New South Wales.). Bradley was one of the officers on the first fleet under the command of Arthur Phillip, which arrived in what is now known as Sydney Harbour in January 1788. Their intention was to establish a convict colony. Bradley was involved with the surveying of the harbour. In essence this surveying, seemingly harmless, was key in the process of possession and dispossession. The box is essentially a trompe l'oeil suggesting a particular reality but revealing another' (Monica Oppen, Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem catalogue).

This work features text from a book by W.A.W de Beuzeville, an avid forest ecologist and the author of Australian Trees for Australian Planting (1947). Through this text, Oppen reworks passionate feelings against deforestation and the environmental degradation that comes with it. In chosen texts, Beuzeville also talks of land areas needing to escape from the busy-ness of the industrialised human life. The work features relief prints that expose the horizon as being a harsh, barren line. Through this work Oppen pushes her love for the sacred natural world, and her fear of human life destroying it (and in turn, inevitably destroying itself).

White gloves are stitched to printed sheets so when the reader pulls them on, they realise that they are attached to the pages. The five texts that are featured in the work contain the stunted and embittered parts of communication in a relationship. This work invites the reader/viewer to connect themselves (both physically and emotionally) to the relationship they discover through the texts.

Produced for the exhibition 'Lesson in History II: Democracy,' this art book is 'about the vote or choice of the people. In this book the word DEMOCRACY is tagged with myriad words both positive and negative that have become linked to democracy and the political and democratic process in Australia. There is a voting sheet included so a vote can be taken of those for or against democracy' (Monica Oppen, Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem catalogue).

Comprising pictures and letterpress printing, this art book was created and produced for the inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street- a street located in Baghdad, Iraq. Considered the the heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community, it was bombed in March 2007. San Francisco poet and activist Beau Beausoleil developed and promoted numerous projects commemorating the street Al-Mutanabbi Street. One of these, the Al-Mutanabbi Street Inventory, was a call to poets, writers and artists from around the world to produce a series of letterpress printed broadsides in response to the bombing and to reflect on the healing process.

Published by Ant Press for Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem, The Silent Scream 'presents, not only a companion catalogue to an exhibition held at Monash University Rare Books, but also a journey through some of humanity's most inhumane and hypocritical moments. Reaching back to William Blake with a facsimile of his illuminated book America : A Prophecy then travelling through the two world wars and on to the modern era the catalogue provides insights into 77 influential books and works presented in book form.... For the first time in Australia the work of Australian artists and writers working in the field of bookarts have been placed into a context with an international and historical perspective. Each book has been profiled with images and an accompanying commentary. Monica Oppen and Peter Lyssiotis, both practicing artists, lend their unique perspective to the social content and the techniques behind the production of these books' (Bibliotheca Librorum Apud Artificem website).

Oppen responds to a suite of images, a proof of a book which has never been finished given to her by Lyssiotis. Finding the images brutal and confronting rather than throwing the work away she writes her response questioning how far has feminism got us if someone can still nonchalantly produce images such as these. The coda text about patriarchy is from Grace King’s tumblr stream and was used with permission. This book focuses on keeping open discussion about women, feminism, the patriarchy, media and the overall possibility of gender equality in our present and future societies.

'The most powerful way to breakdown stereotypes is by asking questions, by keeping discussion alive. Only then can we move towards a new reality' (Monica Oppen, Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem catalogue).

The second edition was produced in the style and with the materiality of a famous magazine. The images were taken from a selection of women's magazines, notably Harper’s Bazar.

Oppen reflects on the way in which we as people can struggle to represent the planet. Both maps and words and images can only ever show fragments.

'To make this book, I've taken an old school atlas and cut out the map pages and refolded them and stitched them together in a away that there is no beginning or end. The book is circular. The sections can be unfolded. The small photographic images are from another book about life on earth. All organic forms. An atlas is a representation of the planet. We struggle constantly to capture the planet in a form we can understand' (Monica Oppen, Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem catalogue).

'This work comes from four incidents where I noticed women crying, while travelling on public transport. I remember one incident specifically, where a women was talking on her mobile phone and muffling her crying. As far as I could work out it was a relationship break up. It is one of the strange things about mobile phones that private life suddenly has become public. However I also get caught out, reading a sad passage in a book and wiping away the tears' (Monica Oppen, Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem catalogue).

Working on the same set of sheets as Dark Forest but collated and folded differently a new text has been overlaid" (Monica Oppen, Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem catalogue).

Using the religious image of Jesus’ mother suffering at the foot of the cross, Oppen brings to attention mothers suffering. Through a combination of drawings, poems and texts the work focuses on the pain that comes from losing sons due to past, present and future world wars and conflicts.

'The Stabat Mater is a chant dating from the 13th century. Its intensely devotional fervour focuses on the suffering of Jesus’ mother at the foot of the cross. In this work I shift the focus to mothers who have lost their sons in world conflicts; past, present and future. It is a call to work for peace' (Monica Oppen, Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem catalogue).

This work revolves around presenting a famous city through photographs (Oppen) and poetry (Lyssiotis) while avoiding clichés. Oppen does this by photographing without looking into the viewfinder in order to free her photography from any subconscious direction. Lyssiotis’ poetry adds a further psychological dimension to the work.

'I wanted to photograph a famous city but avoid the cliché shots. I wanted to photograph that famous city from being in the city. The best way to do this was to mark out an itinerary and then as I walked take photographs without looking through the view finder so the tourist-mind couldn't edit or compose—it was a way of overriding those clichés! The text by Peter Lyssiotis adds another dimension—the psychological' (Monica Oppen, Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem catalogue).

Using text, graphics and fabrics, Monica Oppen produces an extremely powerful art piece as a cry for justice for all women raped in war. A social and political commentary, When the Soldiers... makes a point to have rape listed as an official war crime in order to bring lawful punishment to those criminals.

'This book stands with the women raped in war as a cry to have rape listed as a war crime so that perpetrators can be brought to justice' (Monica Oppen, Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem catalogue).

Oppen presents a metaphorical forest to symbolise the power and the powerlessness that comes with love, sacrifice, betrayal and loss. With the use of strong images and text, the entire work has a dark and dense energy, creating a moment which allows readers to feel and reflect on their deepest of set human emotions.

'This work is about love; about power and powerlessness; about action and inaction; about sacrifice, betrayal and loss' (Monica Oppen, Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem catalogue).

Using photographs and text, Botanikos calls on its readers/viewers to understand the deeply rooted dependence we have on the universe and its plants to sustain human life. This is another one of Oppen’s’ works that call on her readers/viewers to reflect on the simplest aspects of human life itself and remember the unbreakable tie to nature that it holds.

'Botanikos celebrates simply the significance of plants to the sustenance of life on our planet. Plants are everywhere except the very extreme zones, because of their omnipresence we take them for granted. This book calls you to stop and take note' (Monica Oppen, Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem catalogue).

The book also includes a small public declaration piece; 'It’s Time!.'

EGO is a self-reflective, Buddhist art work in which Oppen reveals the tight boundaries that we build around ourselves through egotistic thoughts and behaviours. Through rubber stamp text, Oppen uncovers aspects of ego in order to prompt thoughts and actions that lay beyond the inflexible constraints of a 'big ego.'

'Attachment to our ego is the cause of huge suffering. By writing out the aspects of the ego onto paper and containing them in a box is a way of reminding myself that it is possible to move beyond the limiting framework by which my ego defines itself' (Monica Oppen, Bibliotheca Librorum apud Artificem catalogue).