Picturing the Island

Abstract

This article investigates how recollections of a colonial childhood might be re-contextualized within Pacific Ocean cultures and their histories and the fields of island studies and post-colonialism, in the language andmaterials of creative visual art. Examining Crawford’s artist book Picturing the Island (2016) as a case study to resolve these questions, this paper explores whether printed artworks, and particularly artworks employing the book form, present an appropriate opportunity to gather these diverse narratives. It asks: given the historical significance of the printed page and its various origins in news media, the library, literature and fine art, does an artist-made book, with its poetic and discrete significance as an art object, carry a resonance powerful enough to contemporize the past?
 Dates are important, and histories are so easily forgotten. The creative research project, Picturing the Island, takes the form of an artist book, as a means to measure the capacity of this form of hand-printed artwork to re-present long-forgotten histories. Does the historical significance of the printed page – given its various origins in news media, the library, literature and fine art – carry a resonance powerful enough to draw the past towards, or even into, the present?