Trent Parke

• Stanley/Barker 2020
• Hardback, 1st edition/1st printing
• New
  

Born in the Australian steel city of Newcastle, one of TRENT PARKE’S only early childhood memories is accompanying his mother to pick his dad up from work, travelling through a landscape dominated by ship yards, chimneys, and the BHP steelworks. 

Throughout his career PARKE has always been interested in the transformative powers of light, but it was the ephemeral changing colours of dawn and dusk, the multitude or different reds that made him curious about the colour crimson. He discovered the colour that is used in commercial products is harvested from the crushed and boiled bodies of the female scale insect, the Cochineal. A tiny minute insect who inhabits the pads of the prickly pear cactus and who are farmed for their crimson dye. A dye now used primarily in cosmetics and food colouring. 

Scarlet, magenta, orange, and crimson, are the coloured dyes produced by the Cochineal and also seem to feature spectacularly in the colours of creation, as seen in an Eagle Nebula during the birth of a new star and recorded by the Hubble space telescope. These colours of birth and blood Parke also remembers from the bath water, the umbilical cord and placenta, at the birth of his sons. 

‘As soon as the female insect is delivered of its new numerous progeny, it becomes a meer husk and dies; so that great care is taken in Mexico, where it is principally collected, to kill the old ones while big with young, to prevent the young ones escaping into life, and depriving them of that beautiful scarlet dye, so much esteemed by all the world.’ - John Ellis, Esq; 1762.

Out of print, final copies of the first printing.

• Stanley/Barker 2020
• Hardback, 2nd edition
• New
  

Born in the Australian steel city of Newcastle, one of TRENT PARKE’S only early childhood memories is accompanying his mother to pick his dad up from work, travelling through a landscape dominated by ship yards, chimneys, and the BHP steelworks. 

Throughout his career PARKE has always been interested in the transformative powers of light, but it was the ephemeral changing colours of dawn and dusk, the multitude or different reds that made him curious about the colour crimson. He discovered the colour that is used in commercial products is harvested from the crushed and boiled bodies of the female scale insect, the Cochineal. A tiny minute insect who inhabits the pads of the prickly pear cactus and who are farmed for their crimson dye. A dye now used primarily in cosmetics and food colouring. 

Scarlet, magenta, orange, and crimson, are the coloured dyes produced by the Cochineal and also seem to feature spectacularly in the colours of creation, as seen in an Eagle Nebula during the birth of a new star and recorded by the Hubble space telescope. These colours of birth and blood Parke also remembers from the bath water, the umbilical cord and placenta, at the birth of his sons. 

‘As soon as the female insect is delivered of its new numerous progeny, it becomes a meer husk and dies; so that great care is taken in Mexico, where it is principally collected, to kill the old ones while big with young, to prevent the young ones escaping into life, and depriving them of that beautiful scarlet dye, so much esteemed by all the world.’ - John Ellis, Esq; 1762.

After the first edition sold out in just five days this new evolved edition brings subtle changes to the mesmeric series. 

• Stanley Barker 2022
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New

A week before the global COVID-19 pandemic took hold in 2020 the Australian artist Trent Parke found himself on a whirlwind road trip across India. 

The frenetic photographs in Parke's new book Cue the Sun were all produced from fast moving vehicles, of the outside world as it rushed by, almost as if in a dream. 

The people rendered at 1000th of a second, are working through the night, pushing towards a smartphone driven modernity. 

“I kept feeling as though I could have been in any number of other countries at a given time. Though the windows I felt the past and future collide. The contradiction, beauty, chaos and hope. Humanity on the move.” Trent Parke

This unique artist book is contracted as a unique, 20 meter long, double printed concertina, taking you on a fantastical journey through the kinetic Indian night to the breath-taking dawn. 

Out of print, final few sealed copies.

• Stanley Barker 2023
• Flexibound, 1st edition/1st printing, 294p
• New
  

Trent Parke’s landmark publication Monument is a portal through which we bear witness to the disintegration of the universe over 294 expertly printed pages.

The monolithic publication is bound in leather bearing totemic coordinates to the planet Earth, blind stamped end sheets, black sprayed edges, and a loose steel plaque, that once removed, leaves the volume without language.

When Trent Parke moved to Sydney from a small Australian country town, his first impression was of the sheer volume of people. He would grab his camera and go out exploring at every opportunity, fascinated by the endless processions. 
At rush hour, he watched as the city workers moved in a great mass, all walking the great conveyer belt of life. In a trance-like state, treading the same path day after day, week after week, year after year… clocking on, clocking off, all under the spell of the city. Parke would stand on the edge of the wave, on the outside of a new world, looking in. As if watching a newly discovered species. 
 
 “At night I would watch the eclipse of moths, millions of them constantly circling the lights of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. At the same time, on my balcony, a miniature performance played out around the light above my head. The moths inevitably and without resistance were drawn to their ultimate demise. Spiralling out of control, like small spaceships caught in a tractor beam. Lured and blinded by the bright white light, they were taken out by hundreds of birds swooping in to snatch them from the air… spiders sat waiting on their webs. Built with precise coordinates across the face of the lights, they captured the hapless tiny creatures that slipped through. If any miraculously managed to survive that onslaught, they continued on, driven towards the flame, intoxicated by those burning hot light globes. Then suddenly an electrical charge in the still air. A small puff of smoke. Gone. Instant disintegration of a life form. Another blip in the universe. Another small spacecraft colliding with the blazing sun.”

- Trent Parke

Flexibound with embossed leather cover,  blind stamped end sheets, sprayed edges with multiple paper weights and gatefolds.

1st printing.

• Stanley Barker 2023
• Flexibound, 1st edition/2nd printing, 294p
• New
  

Trent Parke’s landmark publication Monument is a portal through which we bear witness to the disintegration of the universe over 294 expertly printed pages.

The monolithic publication is bound in leather bearing totemic coordinates to the planet Earth, blind stamped end sheets, black sprayed edges, and a loose steel plaque, that once removed, leaves the volume without language.

When Trent Parke moved to Sydney from a small Australian country town, his first impression was of the sheer volume of people. He would grab his camera and go out exploring at every opportunity, fascinated by the endless processions. At rush hour, he watched as the city workers moved in a great mass, all walking the great conveyer belt of life. In a trance-like state, treading the same path day after day, week after week, year after year… clocking on, clocking off, all under the spell of the city. Parke would stand on the edge of the wave, on the outside of a new world, looking in. As if watching a newly discovered species. 
 
 “At night I would watch the eclipse of moths, millions of them constantly circling the lights of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. At the same time, on my balcony, a miniature performance played out around the light above my head. The moths inevitably and without resistance were drawn to their ultimate demise. Spiralling out of control, like small spaceships caught in a tractor beam. Lured and blinded by the bright white light, they were taken out by hundreds of birds swooping in to snatch them from the air… spiders sat waiting on their webs. Built with precise coordinates across the face of the lights, they captured the hapless tiny creatures that slipped through. If any miraculously managed to survive that onslaught, they continued on, driven towards the flame, intoxicated by those burning hot light globes. Then suddenly an electrical charge in the still air. A small puff of smoke. Gone. Instant disintegration of a life form. Another blip in the universe. Another small spacecraft colliding with the blazing sun.”

- Trent Parke

Flexibound with embossed leather cover,  blind stamped end sheets, sprayed edges with multiple paper weights and gatefolds.

2nd printing.