KURT SCHRANZER

The Book of Oracles
2002, acrylic, nickel piano-hinges, wood, book object 34 x 38 x 12 cm
mounted under glass, 2 pack acrylic/wood box frame 63 x 63 x 18 cm
Signed and inscribed reverse with title, date, catalogue no. MCMLXXIX
Provenance: Collection of Artist
Exhibited: 2002 The Great Library, Room 35, Sydney. 2003 52nd Blake Prize for Religious Art, The Sir Hermann Black Gallery, University of Sydney, NSW. 2004 Touring Blake Prize, Grafton Regional Gallery, NSW; Port Macquarie Hastings Regional Art Gallery, NSW; Australian Catholic University, Strathfield, NSW; Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, VIC; Stanthorpe Regional Art Gallery, QLD. 2006 The Delmar Codex, Delmar Gallery, Trinity Grammar, Sydney. 2008 Phantastische Stilleben and other drawings, Flinders Street Gallery, Sydney. 2015 Bookmarked, Stills Gallery, Sydney, NSW.

© Kurt Schranzer 2007

‘We are prophets each one, pieces of god each one, on the earth, within divine purpose’.

The Book of Oracles is a book of divine announcement and revelation, but in its unorthodox multi-hinged form—protean and shifting—devoid of doctrinal and theological text—it is self-oracular; reflecting a contemporary spirituality of mutable and expanding natures; suggesting that one’s divinity and life-passage are not bestowed and controlled by an external creator, rather, self-writ and self-prophesised.

Presented floating in the shape of a star, its position alludes to a text from the Egyptian Book of The Dead:
“I am a child of earth and of starry heaven, but my race is of heaven alone.”
Artists Statement for the 52nd Blake Prize for Religious Art, 2003