Tissue bergs and ice shelves are amongst the new work in ‘Ice Bound: Antarctic Bookworks’ by book artist Rachel Hazell which opens today at the Casa Luna gallery in Amsterdam.

All the work in the exhibition was inspired by her recent visit to Antarctica as artist-in-residence on an expedition ship which travelled 5,000 miles from South America around the Antarctic.

Rachel designs, writes, illustrates, prints, binds and exhibits book-related work and in recent years she has started making large paper installations.  Last year she made a metre high guest book on behalf of the Edinburgh Book Festival to commemorate their 21st birthday and in 2001 she created Amygdala, a two metre high interactive book sculpture for an exhibition called ‘Mental’ by Helen Storey.   Thousands of people have now written on the pages so she is full of secrets, suggestions and stories.

In 2004 Rachel was selected to show her work at the Holland Paper Bienalle which was an inspiring experience as she discovered there were many paper artists in other countries also creating large installations, something which is very rare in the UK.   Another outcome of the visit was the invitation to hold an exhibition at the Casa Luna gallery.

In October last year she received a creative development award from the Scottish Arts Council which has enabled her to develop her new work after her visit to Antarctica during December and January 2005. 

She is showing a mixture of paper sculptures, framed bookworks, and unique limited edition pieces in her exhibition and one of the highlights is a metre long tissue paper iceberg.

The exhibition is on at the Casa Luna, 14 Leliegracht, Amsterdam from 26 March to 17 April 2005.

Discover more about Rachel’s experiences in Antarctica and how it influenced her work in our feature.