Artist’s Book Award  —  Olivia Moroney – Midlands Marvel

At just 34, Handmark artist Olivia Moroney has achieved a lifelong ambition: to have work in a prestigious Victorian collection alongside her heroine, pioneering printmaker, Jessica Traill.
 
“I just screamed,” Olivia says, recalling the moment she heard the news. Her artist’s book, 12 Months in the Midlands, had just been awarded the Fire Station Print Prize for Craftsmanship. And, most thrillingly, it has been acquired by the State Library of Victoria for a collection that includes works by Jessica Traill, one of Australia’s most significant print makers. “I am blown away that my artist’s book will be in the same room as works by Jessica.”
 
Olivia’s concertina artist’s book features drypoint etchings of 12 trees captured over the course of a year on her family property in the Southern Midlands. Rendered in black, the prints trace the seasonal rhythms. Each page holds a single tree as the months move from “winter’s starkness into spring’s promise, a dry and dusty summer and autumn’s turn of leaves.”
 
The judges praised Olivia’s work for its quiet, yet powerful, narrative: “A meditation in the form of trees across time, which is revealed as the concertina pages slowly turn.”