Axon: Creative Explorations

Declarations is a collaboration between a British poet who has spent long periods in Japan and Italy and a New Zealand painter now living in London. Both are versatile creative artists. Peter Robinson is a prolific poet whose Collected Poems 1976–2016 was published by Shearsman Press in 2017. He has also written novels and short stories and several volumes of literary criticism, and in his early years he was a serious amateur painter. Andrew McDonald, who has recently changed pronouns to ‘they’, also has several strings to their bow, working mainly as a painter and performance artist and sometimes as a maker of ceramics and of fashion textiles. They have been friends for twenty years and interested admirers of each other’s work. This is their second collaboration, after the pamphlet Ekphrastic Marriage (Pine Wave Press, 2009).

This article contains two files: an introduction by the artist and a downloadable zine, to print in booklet imposition. 

This article contains two files: an introduction by the artist and a downloadable zine, to print in booklet imposition. 

This article contains two files: a visual essay and a sound file. 

This photoessay explores the creation of a collaborative book Not Thinking about the Circus at the Circus, a finalist in the ArtSpace Mackay Libris Award and recently acquired by Artspace Mackay fortheir artist book collection. It particularly addresses the social and political uses of creative publishing, creative art/text publishing relationships and collaborative shifts.