When artist John Bokor visited the Mitchell Library Reading Room during Sydney Festival a couple of years ago, he found himself more interested in the room than what he’d actually come for. A short time later, as Head of Pictures, I received a request from John for permission to draw in the Mitchell Library Reading Room.

His request really piqued my interest and working together with Samantha Hagan, Senior Project Officer, Events, John’s simple idea grew to become an occasional artists’ residency called Drawing the Library. The residency aims to open up the Library to artists to interpret and respond visually and creatively to its spaces. John became our first artist in residence for two weeks in March this year.

His interest in drawing the Mitchell Reading Room was a given, but we also wanted to make other parts of the Library available to John so his residency began with a behind the scenes tour of parts of the Library the public rarely visits or sees. What I hadn’t expected was that John would respond so quickly to the Collection Care lab spaces housed in the Mitchell Library’s basement as we passed through. So the tour was cut short. He’d found his focus.

One of John’s first drawings was of Collection Care’s Bindery as it was early in March but which by the end of that month had already gone to make way for the Library’s new Security office. John drew the Macquarie Lab, that runs parallel to Macquarie Street at the moat level, and the Domain Lab that looks across to the Domain at the far north eastern corner of the Mitchell basement. Both spaces are poised for refurbishment to bring them to world class standard so John has provided an unanticipated record of pending change ...