lives...

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Collectively its parts tell a big and complex story of first contact, multilateral relationships and an ancient culture in transition. The uniquely Australian art movement’s story is told through its artists’ biographies—mapping their multiple connections of family kinship, traditional skinship, language, geography and tjukurrpa (dreaming) custodianship—alongside their artistic achievements.
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Lives of the Papunya Tula Artists
Cover featuring my design treatment and photograph by John Corker

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Much of the impetus for the Aboriginal publisher to produce this book was to provide credible documentation of the artists’ lives for their descendants. Developing the book for family and cultural considerations was fundamental to the design brief. Such considerations were already embedded by the author in the manuscript through such means as an index system that primarily sourced artists by their skin names. My design simply enhanced and expanded on the theme.
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Lives of the Papunya Tula Artists
Front cover featuring my design treatment and photograph by John Corker

Discover what has been said about this book or explore more of my publication and cover designs

Lives of the Papunya Tula Artists
Front cover featuring my cover design treatment of the photograph by John Corker

Discover what has been said about this book or explore more of my publication and cover designs

Lives of the Papunya Tula Artists
Endpaper and flap featuring my cover design treatment of the photograph by John Corker

Discover what has been said about this book or explore more of my publication and cover designs

Lives of the Papunya Tula Artists
Front cover featuring my cover design treatment of the photograph by John Corker

Discover what has been said about this book or explore more of my publication and cover designs

From the brief, I devised a cover treatment to display the book for its best marketing prospects while also providing an option for cultural discretion in its presentation. The book was wrapped in a dust jacket featuring two artists descending a sandhill dispersed with small vegetation and blooms. I developed a variation of the cover with the artists ‘photoshopped out’ and applied an overlay based on the negative space of the primed canvas surrounding early dotting techniques. It displayed the similarities of the vegetation and early painters’ palettes without showing deceased people on the book’s case binding and endpapers. With little need for a dust jacket in the desert, it was soon discarded in family and community environments with the book maintaining its anonymity until opened.

I also developed a schematic style of circles with connecting lines that visually implied the tingari (mythological beings) grid designs which had been regularly deployed on early paintings. Used sparingly, the schematics supported the book’s narrative and guided the readers’ experience.
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