Design Tasmania
Corner of Brisbane and Tamar streets
Launceston, 7250
Tasmania
info@designtasmania.com.au
+61 3 6331 5506
The People's Library
3rd June – 1st October 2023
A Published Event with Negative Press and Cherie Schweitzer
Tethered in everyday acts of writing and reading, The People’s Library is an ambitious act of public telling.
Part performance library, part installation of radical, social publishing, The People’s Library unfolds a once-in-a-generation narrative of reading, writing and fugitive study from across lutruwita/ Tasmania. Gathering together a unique library of 113 books, written by 170 Tasmanian authors, and informed by the hugely influential colour system, Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, this newly conceived iteration for Design Tasmania's Price Hall by A Published Event, Negative Press and designer Cherie Schweitzer, promises a dynamic, interactive and accessible experience in the heart of Launceston, in harmony with Design Tasmania founder Gary Cleveland's vision for Design Tasmania as a 'living room for the city'.
The People's Library Catalogue
Press Release
Public Program Tickets
Image credit: Peter Whyte Photography
Image credit: Colour matching print samples for The People’s Library with Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours. 2018. A Published Event.
Public Program
Sunday 4 June 2pm - 4pm
Opening at Design Tasmania
with Margaret Woodward, Justy Phillips, Trent Walter, Cherie Schweitzer
Thursday 8 June 10.30am - 11.30am / Friday 9 June 1.30pm - 2.30pm
with reader/artist-in-residence Trent Walter (Negative Press)
Saturday 15 July 10am - 3.30pm
Active Osho Meditation with Chando Steiner | Interactive conversation/workshop on making sense of contemporary art with Jane Deeth | Short Story Readings with Libbie Davies | Deloraine Writers Group Readings | Illustrated Reading with Jennie Jackson
Sunday 16 July 1pm - 4pm
The Missing and Other Stories with Steve Plowright | John Olsen, Terry Woodward and the Campbell Town Summer Schools with Margaret Woodward | Wit’s End with Leonie Crowden: Author Talk
Saturday 26 August 2pm - 3pm
From publishing rejection to sudden success: Kyle Perry reveals tips and tricks from his journey to writing an acclaimed best seller.
Kyle Perry grew up in Ridgely in the North West of Tasmania and currently works in the drug and alcohol rehabilitation sector while working on his novels. Kyle has a bachelor’s degree in counselling and coaching, and his early writing success started as writer-in-residence on the Spirit of Tasmania, and also a winner of a national short-story competition.
Since he was sixteen he has written one novel a year and Book number 110 in The People's Library 'The Kraken and Me' was his first published novel.
Since 2018 he has secured a three book contract with Penguin. The first, The Bluffs, has been translated into five languages. It was shortlisted for the Dymocks Book of the Year and the Indie’s Debut Fiction Book of the Year, and was longlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards’ General Fiction Book of the Year.
The Deep was his second novel with Penguin and was shortlisted for the 2022 Ned Kelly award for Best Crime Fiction Novel. Kyle’s third book, The Wild, is scheduled for release in August 2023.
Saturday 2 September 10am - 12pm
Sisters Akousmatica | Airwaves Workshop with Julia Drouhin + Pip Stafford
Sound, as a medium, particularly radio, presents an opportunity to radically explore ideas, up-lift voices and dig deep into tricky or complex concepts. Radio is everywhere - what other medium is listened to in homes, and cars, and community spaces, and workplaces, and is so accessible?
Since 2016 Sisters Akousmatica (Phillipa Stafford and Julia Drouhin) have been producing expanded radio projects that explore the radical possibilities of transmission. We've Their book #73 for the People’s Library: SK, (Silent Key, meaning “end of contact”) is set on the longest possible terrestrial journey between shortwave radio stations
across the world.
This 2 hour workshop is suitable for participants from aged 8 to adults, and where texts, poems and stories are created and recorded ready for broadcast on radio.
Saturday 2 September 12pm - 1pm
Fiona Stocker: Writing and Self-Publishing Memoir - Rural, Humourous and Other
Fiona will be reading from her books Pathways and her newly published memoir Saddleback Wife at Design Tasmania, and will be talking about her process of writing memoir and self-publishing.
Fiona Stocker is an English woman living in the Tamar Valley of Tasmania. Fiona freelances for lifestyle, food and travel magazines and publications. She is mainly a memoir writer. Her book #87 Pathways in The People’s Library follows women and men from different generations and cultures, and explores the things that matter to us all: a safe haven, friends and family around us, and what makes a home.
Her book Apple Island Wife, published in 2018 by Unbound, is a humorous rural memoir about leaving city life and moving to five acres in Tasmania. The sequel Saddleback Wife has just been published and is a behind-the-scenes look at running a gourmet farm business, and the hard work behind the idyll. Fiona has been writing professionally and privately for thirty years, and in 2022 she received a Graduate Certificate in Writing and Literature from Deakin University.
Tickets
Image Credit: Justy Phillips and Margaret Woodward of A Published Event, courtesy Rosie Hastie for #ThePeoplesLibrary and Salamanca Arts Centre
The People's Library Opening, photo by Melanie Kate
The People's Library Opening, photo by Melanie Kate
The People's Library Opening, photo by Melanie Kate
The People's Library Opening, photo by Melanie Kate
The People's Library Opening, photo by Melanie Kate
The People's Library Opening, photo by Melanie Kate
The People's Library Opening, photo by Melanie Kate
The People's Library Opening, photo by Melanie Kate
The People's Library Opening, photo by Melanie Kate
The People's Library Opening, photo by Melanie Kate
A Published Event
Justy Phillips and Margaret Woodward are artists, writers and publishers, working collaboratively as A Published Event. They make long-term relational artworks through shared acts of public telling. Exploring chance encounter, constructed situations and the shared authorship of lived experience, A Published Event work with artists and writers, materials and ideas, writing, prose, book-works and performance. In 2022, the were Studio Artists in Residence at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, USA; and in 2019, undertook the Ruth Stephan Fellowship at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University and Studio Residency at the Albers Foundation, USA. Phillips has a PhD from RMIT University, Melbourne (2014) and Woodward, a PhD in Design from Curtin University of Technology (2009). Their work is held in private and institutional collections around the world.
Justy Phillips + Margaret Woodward, photo by Lara Van Raay
Trent Walter | Negative Press
Trent Walter is an artist, printer and publisher based in Naarm/Melbourne. His practice is defined by an interdisciplinary approach between these roles, within the framework of a total and community-engaged practice that also includes design and curating among its disciplines.
Recent projects include the curated exhibition Circleworks at Arts Project Australia, which brought together works by Fulli Andrinopoulos, Louise Bourgeois, Julian Martin and Linda Puna through a material connection as a means to flesh out their conceptual relationships; the ongoing print portfolio, exhibition and publishing project From Australia: An Accumulation (https://fromaustralia.net/), which has included curated exhibitions in 2021 at Watch This Space (NT), Mimili Maku Arts (SA), Latrobe Regional Gallery (VIC), Conners Conners (VIC), and SOCIAL, Salamanca Art Centre (TAS).
Negative Press
Cherie Schweitzer
Cherie Schweitzer is a senior exhibition designer and creative producer with 15 years experience in the creative industries. She has held positions across leading cultural institutions and most recently as Head of Exhibitions at the Biennale of Sydney. She enjoys collaborating with artists, curators and cultural leaders to realise exhibitions and ambitious creative projects and is excited by expanding the possibilities of the production and presentation of artworks in new and exciting ways to create memorable and meaningful encounters.
Isaac Williams + Joseph Willey
The construction of the display furniture for the Design Tasmania exhibition of ‘The Peoples Library’ was completed by a first time collaboration between local makers Isaac Williams and Joseph Willey.
Isaac Williams is a lutruwita/Tasmanian Designer & Artist. Born into a maker culture in the rural north east, since completing his Bachelor of Environmental Design (Arch) at Utas work has ranged from visual to object, as both client and personal work. Current interest is around adaptive reuse, in particular found waste material experiments.
Joseph Willey was born and raised in Launceston but has gotten to work around the globe as a carpenter next to some of the best in the craft. His passions are centered around sustainability and traditional joinery.