The manuscript for my forthcoming book, Kristian Fredrikson. Designer, to be published by Melbourne Books, has been described as ‘an impressive work with beautiful illustrations.’ The publisher’s aim is to produce it as a ‘large format hard cover’ book. This will properly highlight Fredrikson’s rich and diverse output, an output that stretches across five decades of work for dance, opera, theatre, film and musicals.
Publishing the Fredrikson book in such a manner is an expensive procedure, and the aim of this ACF project is to raise $15,000, which will be added to the publisher’s own significant financial outlay. This will help offset the cost of printing, especially the amount of colour printing that will be involved, given that around 90% of the illustrative material is in colour. High quality colour printing will give proper prominence to the remarkable art that Fredrikson produced, which drew so strongly on his wide knowledge of art history and his pursuit of excellence through intensive research.
In so many cases, his designs – his costume designs in particular – are beyond what we think of as a design for the theatre. They are not ‘stick figure’ designs but fully realised portrait-style images that display the nature of the characters represented in the works. So many artists across theatrical genres who have worn his costumes remark on this aspect of his designs.
The quote at the beginning of this project is from a review article in an undated newspaper clipping from an unidentified newspaper found in Fredrikson’s personal archive. The article refers to the 1975 Melbourne Theatre Company production of The Revenger’s Tragedy, which was a milestone in Fredrikson’s career. It was while working on that production that Fredrikson met choreographer Graeme Murphy. This meeting changed the course of Fredrikson’s career. This is one of the many themes discussed in the book
Please consider donating to this project so that the final product will be worthy of Fredrikson’s remarkable career and his extensive input into Australasian performance.
