Avalon: art & life of an apartment building
BOOK AND EXHIBITION IDEA, RESEARCH, EDITING AND DESIGN RICARDO FELIPE / CO-PUBLISHED BY VANITY PRESS AND MUSEUM OF BRISBANE, 2005
288 pages, 210 x 148 mm, hardcover, over 260 illustrations, 1000 copies, both local and international distribution, out of print
CONTRIBUTORS / Includes texts by Ross Gibson, Leonard Brown, Luke Roberts, Skye Raabe, Robert Riddel, Bojan Darveniza, Timothy Hill, Courtney Pedersen, Jane Grigg, Bryan Ferry, Alice-Anne Boylan and Ricardo Felipe. Photo-report by Tom Burless
FEATURED ARTISTS / Lincoln Austin, Melinda Jane, Troy-Anthony Baylis, Leonard Brown, Jun Chen, Li Juan Chen, Donna Confetti, Miles Hall, Greg Nelson, Jane O'Neill, Sean Phillips, Skye Raabe, Sandra Selig, Luke Roberts, Elmar Verwer, Heather Winter
REVIEWS IN 2005 / The Weekend Australian, Radio National’s Saturday Breakfast, The Courier-Mail, Lino, Artichoke, Wallpaper, Vogue Living, Modern Painters / The Art Life (June 2005) / M/C Reviews (12 July 2005) by Christina Schmidt
AWARDS IN 2006 / Best Book in the Museums Australia Multimedia and Publication Design Awards / Best Designed Non-fiction Illustrated Book in the Australian Publishers Association Awards / Finalist in the Mohawk Fine Papers annual awards (USA)
CREDITS / This project received funding from the Museum of Brisbane, Brisbane City Council and a grant from the Queensland Government, through Arts Queensland.
“Avalon looks at the history and occupants of a Brisbane apartment block, a utopian half-timbered collection of 26 flats constructed back in 1929. Each flat has a letter, rather than a number, and this monograph presents itself as a journey through the alphabetised apartments, examining residents past and present. Felipe, who also lives in the building, mixes reminiscences with images of the often eclectic interiors, reflecting the artistic community that has grown up with the building.”
— Jonathan Bell, 'Alphabet City', Wallpaper, October 2005
“The book (and the exhibition on which it was based) takes off from the enchanting premise that a building can provide a kind of genius loci for a group of artists, that a subtle commonality pervades all those who live and work there. Seen another way, Avalon is a touching tribute to all that is left behind in history – not only the apartment block itself, which architect Timothy Hill says in one of the book’s essays is ‘more like the sort of building Brisbane tends to demolish rather than create’, but also to the artists themselves.”
— Rex Butler, ‘Art's hot spots’, The Courier Mail, 30 June 2005