Deshan Tennekoon: The Book as Puzzle, Archive, and Memory
Deshan Tennekoon: The Book as Puzzle, Archive, and Memory
Most people and companies only make one book in a lifetime, so Auckland book designer Deshan Tennekoon treats each one as legacy rather than product. For the collector’s edition of ‘The Incomplete Thombu’, T. Shanaathanan’s paintings on the loss of Tamil land during Sri Lanka’s civil war, he kept the original pages but modelled the binding on colonial property registers from the 1700s. A history of a tobacco company went to print without a single product photograph. ‘Chinaman’, Shehan Karunatilaka’s Gratiaen, DSC and Commonwealth prize-winning novel, took 47 type treatments to carry its unreliable narrator. A talk about making a book worth keeping.
Speakers
Deshan Tennekoon
Deshan's design practice counts over 85 books on a range of subjects, in a variety of forms. The people who commissioned him include poets, banks, cultural institutions, and artists. He was Fulbright Visiting Scholar of Photography at Berkeley in 2009. Prior to that, he read Law at King's College London.
Deshan's design practice counts over 85 books on a range of subjects, in a variety of forms. The people who commissioned him include poets, banks, cultural institutions, and artists. He was Fulbright Visiting Scholar of Photography at Berkeley in 2009. Prior to that, he read Law at King's College London.
Monday 8 March 2027
9:00am – 9:30am
Shed 10, Queen’s Wharf, 89 Quay Street, Auckland
This event is exclusive to
Local Design Conference ticket holders.
From $99 First Release
Local Design Conference
