Norwegian multidisciplinary artist Ane Thon Knutsen is at it again — at combining
Virginia Woolf and the letterpress, that is.
This time, the Oslo Academy of the Arts professor has debuted her installation, “Printed Words: Adaptations of Virginia Woolf,” at University Archives and Special Collections at the Florida Gulf Coast University library.
The Feb. 23 opening reception introduced the installation, which will be on display from now through the 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf:
Virginia Woolf and Ecologies, June 8-11. Registration opens in March.
In “Printed Works,” the self-taught typesetter who has exhibited other letterpress projects and installations related to Woolf, adapts a selection of Virginia Woolf’s self-published short stories.
“Knutsen’s artistic research aims to point out the influence typography, particularly typesetting, might have on the content of the text. It speaks to the power of designing and publishing one’s own work,” notes the FGCU Special Collections and Archives website.
Her first Woolf project: a book
In “A Printing Press of One’s Own,” which premiered at the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf” at the University of Reading, England, in 2017, Ane produced a hand-set volume that includes Ane’s personal essay about her experience finding a space of her own in which she could pursue her passion — typesetting.
Ane Thon Knutsen with her hand-printed volume introduced at the 2017 Woolf conference, “A Printing Press of One’s Own”
According to Ane, “The book is an essay referring to A Room of One’s Own (1929) by Virginia Woolf. The essay reflects upon women’s role in letterpress, and the importance of a room of one’s own in artistic practices.
“In this book I am investigating the first books printed by Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, both in practice and in the written ‘dialogue’ between Virginia Woolf and myself, as we are both self-taught typesetters.”
Her second: up on the walls
In the winter of 2019, Ane had a major installation of Woolf’s first short story, “The Mark on the Wall,” (1917) in Kunstnernes Hus, an art institution in the centre of Oslo.
As described by Nell Toemen, who visited the exhibit and shared her thoughts with Blogging Woolf, Woolf’s story was “handprinted on I don’t know how many papers, white and off-white, neatly arranged so as to fill all the walls. If you would walk the room in eleven rounds you would be able to read the whole story. Reading it this way is an absolutely different experience than reading the story in a book.”
Page 2 of the “On Being Ill” project
Her third: via Instagram
In March of 2020, as lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the globe, Ane used her printing press to print one sentence on one sheet of paper every day from “On Being Ill,“ Woolf’s 1930 essay.
She shared each page on Instagram and she shared her thoughts about the project with Blogging Woolf.
At the time, she said she was using her printing press to print one sentence on one sheet of paper every day from “On Being Ill” “until we can go back to normal. I hope I will not make it through, as we’re counting about 140 sentences, and the paper is restricted to leftovers from my stock.”
About Ane Thon Knutsen
Ane is internationally known for her letterpress-focused installations and artists’ books. The associate professor of graphic design at the Oslo Academy of the Arts has won numerous awards for her work. She owns and works from her private letterpress studio in Oslo.
We have all speculated about what Virginia Woolf would do if she were alive today.
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