OPEN BOOKS PLUS - AUSTRALIA is a third edition of OPEN BOOKS. The first edition accompanied the 2012 exhibition in the National Library of Wales. A second edition, OPEN BOOKS - CHINA, was written for the exhibition in the Sanshang Museum of Contemporary Art in Hangzhou, in China in November 2013. There the Open Books artists were joined by 41 Chinese artists in a celebration of the Chinese Folding Book. This new edition is for the next stage of the exhibition tour, which now continues to Australia during May to August 2014, with the addition of a group of eighteen of the Chinese artists and another five new artists from Australia. Wherever the exhibition goes, it grows, gathering artists.

The artists and contributors featured in this book are from Australia, China, Hong Kong and the UK. It has a foreword by Welsh poet Tony Curtis and essays by our South East Asia contributors, Frank Vigneron and Joe Zhu. The latest edition also features essays by Australian art historian, Sasha Grishin and artist, Sue Hunt.

These folding books form a wonderfully diverse exhibition and the OPEN BOOKS catalogues offer us a glimpse of it.