My short monograph Graphite: Animated Traces (Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 2024) profiles the material and cultural history of graphite as a creative medium, with close attention to its important role in contemporary art and animation.⁠ The book highlights the medium’s temperament and significance by turning to the unfolding and provisional status of the drawn moving image, considering graphite as a medium of emergent thought, contemplation, tender intimacy and impermanence.⁠

What ways of knowing does graphite enable as a drawing medium? How does animating with graphite – making moving images through extended and repetitive acts of drawing – allow us to understand the world differently? ⁠
⁠Responding with vivid analysis of pencil drawings by celebrated artists such as Georges Seurat, Vija Celmins, Park Seo-Bo and Jasper Johns, as well as animated films by Amy Kravitz, Ryo Orikasa, Alexandra Ramires and ten other artists, Graphite: Animated Traces offers a richly detailed portrait of an everyday material we often take for granted⁠

The book is currently available in New Zealand and Australia at the gallery shop. For buyers in Canada and internationally, the book is available at READ Books. The book launch took place at Libby Leshgold Gallery and was accompanied by a drawing session led by Vjeko Sager of the Drawing Room (snapshots of the launch here).