Manchester Metroplitan University

I think we are all getting quite nervous now. I have been struggling with my third book and it just has not been working. I realised in the process that I don’t actually like the character and find her quite intimidating – which I think partly explains some of my difficulty. Its also that pressure of having to produce something which is making me leap at solutions too quickly without experimenting sufficiently. I’ve now made three versions and I’m not happy with any of them. So I’ve decided to leave it for the present and and move on to another one entirely. It did do me a lot of good taking a brief break and going to the V & A for their ‘Blood on Paper’ Exhibition. I found it interesting and infuriating in equal measure. Infuriating because I don’t really think it lived up to the tag-line – ‘the art of the book’. Much on show really felt to me that it was only incidentally in the book form and it was often not really clear that the artist had actually been concerned with the fact the work would be in a book. Perhaps it was just that I was expecting it to be much more about that. Anyway I found some things on display really fantastic – Anselm Kiefer’s huge lead pages ‘The Secret Life of Plants’ were massive and evocative. I loved the way the lead wrinkled at the edges. I was also really struck by Cal Guo-Qiang’s ‘Danger Book – suicide fireworks’. In these he draws with flammable material and incorporates gunpowder; the book is then rigged so that the act of opening it will cause it to explode. A thoroughly satisfying concept. I love the idea that books are dangerous – words can change the world so books are burnt and banned and here the book is literally dangerous. Plus it tempts you – if you had one of them would you risk it bursting into flame in order to look at it ? Perhaps more useful to me though was the exhibition upstairs called ‘Certain Trees’ which focussed on a loose grouping of artists and poets who were and are involved in making and publishing books – influenced in many cases by Ian Hamilton Finlay. This was much more what I think of as artists books – books where the form and content are inextricably bound up together. I stayed on for the evening session – Friday Late – and went to a poetry reading which I thoroughly enjoyed, taking the opportunity to do a bit of sketching while I was there. People were invited to take a book and customise it over the evening – then participate in a sort of book exchange. I’m rather uncomfortable with the notion of altering existing books, so drew in mine – I felt it was adding to it rather than destroying.