I have been invited to present a solo project this August 09 at the recently launched NOID gallery on 31 commercial road. In an era of intimate relationship to objects and ownership the ‘Building my Library’ reflects linear processes of collective narratives into an open active space inspired by Walter Benjamin’s writing ‘Unpacking my library’. The installation is a living library that harbors a number of book like creations.
There is one week left before the opening of the Building my Library project. Last few weeks i have been preparing the book plinths and categorising them at my studio near London fields. Artist friends have been visiting me to find out about the project as they have seen the hand made printed posters on Vyner street and in Hackney wick and all around the east end. I think this idea of bringing people together to create a dialectic relationship within a personal library has been succesfull so far, prior to the show. The two guest performers working towards their presentation at the private view nighton the 13th of August, having to deal with a very intimate space at NOID gallery which make things more intriguing as the entire presentation needs to be site specific. There is only 1 meter long coridor available for Duncan Ward to perform his piece building my lungs in response to my work referencing mushrooms as a visual and mental substance of accumulating knowledge which also symbolises the parasitical nature of human mind and existence within universe.
Bern Rosch Farrely will perform a two man piece having to interact to each other about the correct spoken language based on a book guide on the correct speaking. There is an intimate and didactic relationship with the audience being an on going action within the Building my Library.
I am going to start packing the Library in two days. There are 3 drawings/collages i am still working ,derived from conversations with artists and audience who came to see me working at my studio. Using the book covers of popular novels and books i am creating podiums of iconic portraits referencing stuart and victorian era but are being made in a personal manner. They are almost look like jumping out of a heritace library having a embossing quality to them.
The project’s starting point was the collection of books from the local community (east end) which lasted about a year. Diversity of subjects and languages has become my source material for art making. These material thave been then manipulated and recontextualised becoming a new space.The first draft had a hollistic aesthetic, appeared more as a sculptural object.(photograph a)
Progressiveley within the next couple of months took the form of seperated entities that has been put together to create a new universe.(photogrpahs b, c, d, e)
NOID gallery is a very challenging tiny space (2x3x2 sqm) for showing work and paradoxically the window front is ideal for installing works easy to view from the street. Within this difficult context, i decided to invite 2 performers to respond to ‘Building my Library’ site specific project and to perform along the diversity of objects and images for the private view.
In an era of intimate relationship to objects and ownership the ‘Building my Library’ reflects linear processes of collective narratives into an open active space inspired by Walter Benjamin’s writing ‘Unpacking my library’. The installation will not be the source of the staging of cultural otherness. It is the living library that harbors a number of book like creations from fringe areas. The work questions contemporary notions of ‘selves’ and ‘others’ and opens a path to sense alterity that goes beyond the staging of cultural experience. The art is living and shows itself in fragmented montage form in the oddities of a personal library.
Taking about the specifics of the works which i have been working for the last 4 months .The book plinths are made from pages of collected books removed from their covers and rebound as many being inter-related via a third element: diverse objects abstracted from the images become sculptures. Having transcended any thematic organization, the unreadable book-sculptures, have now the potential to amalgamate into an infinite number of new books, which yield a sculptural library defying conventional categorization. Yet their sculptural formulation raises various questions regarding hierarchies of institutions while the re-contextualization of objects in relation become a new alternative place. In a world that threatens individuality, i am looking at how the Library structure becomes the ‘artists’-shelter’, accentuating my vision of the sublime.
