Tea: The Global Infusion
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Adele Outteridge
Artist's Statement
The Oxford Dictionary defines a book as: ’A collection of sheets of paper or other substance, blank, written or printed, fastened together so as to form a material whole ... protected by covers’.
This definition gives the book artist considerable scope as to what constitutes a book as far as materials and structure are concerned.
I started making books in 1989, everything from carefully bound journals and drawing books to ‘feral’ ones using materials such as teabags, old envelopes, junk mail, newspaper, metal and perspex.
The beauty of making books with transparent media such as perspex, acetate or tracing paper is that all the pages are visible and the whole book can be read at once, even when it is closed. The image or text appears to be suspended in space.
I love the idea of the book as a vessel that contains information in the form of text or images. It divides this information into small sequential units of space - the pages; also into units of time and movement when these pages are read and turned.
Many of my books have no text or imagery at all. Thus there may be little or no distinction between what is the container and what are the contents. The book itself imparts the information.
My current sculptures have taken the structure of the book beyond what most people would call a book. However, the structures generally keep to the above definition of a book.
Paper and threads are essentially two-dimensional media with little volume; however, by creating spaces between adjacent sheets and threads they can enclose relatively large volumes. Most of the sculpture is air.
The Teabag and Recycled Books
In January 1995 I participated in the ‘Feral Artists’ group at the McGregor Summer School with four other artists. I was intrigued by Joanne Smith’s collages and assemblages, one of which included dried teabags. I immediately realised that teabags were made from very beautiful paper that had to be strong yet porous and could be used to make books. When dried and unpicked the tea stains remained, resulting in lovely images in tannin reflecting the structure and folds of each tea bag.
I embarked on a tea bag saving project which was enthusiastically taken up by friends. I realised I had to stress that the tea bags needed to be dried after being presented with one plastic bag containing a slimy, fungus covered lump that was about fifty, still-wet teabags (they dried with some very interesting colours - I ironed them to kill any spores).
The first teabag book made in 1995 was stab bound and made from 600 teabags. It is now very dog-eared and a bit the worse for wear after being fondled and stroked by many, many hands in the twelve years since I made it. I removed a few bags when they became too shredded; there are probably about 594 in it now.
It is fascinating to look at the different colours and depth of colour remaining in the teabags, depending on how each individual makes his/her tea. Some are very dark, from those who drink their tea weak; some are very pale; some have creases from being squeezed.
I have made many teabag books since then, the largest having 1009 bags and sewn with a lovely Coptic stitch.
I have made many books from other recycled materials: corrugated cardboard, teabag tags, cornflake and teabag boxes, paper bath mats, coffee filters, cocktail sticks, supermarket bags, brown paper, envelopes of all sizes, newspapers, playing cards, maps, tourist and other brochures, junk mail, etc. etc.
I like the idea of making something from discarded material; it then becomes valuable again but in a different way. One of my books from discarded bus tickets is in the State Library of Qld. collection, housed in a beautiful Solander box complete with gold lettering.
I also like the stories the books tell. A bus ticket book made from sixty ten trip savers tells a story of six hundred journeys. They are all documented, complete with dates and times. Envelope books tell of the journeys of letters from origin to destination, sometimes with unintended detours, and often have shopping lists and notes written on them. Teabags tell of how strong or weak the tea and if the bag has been squeezed or allowed to drip. There are also stories of the many rituals and ceremonies associated with tea drinking. Best of all is the pleasure of the relaxing ‘cuppa’ with a friend or during a break from work.
Adele Outteridge
19 January 2007