Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Camberwell College of Arts, London
Reviewed by: Stephen Bury
The title does not refer to literal divestment but to self-revelation and concealment, primarily in the psychological sense. And the laying bare, or defamiliarisation, of the medium of the book is also a major concern and theme. What is a book? What isn't a book? How do books work? How do book structures relate to content, to memory and to narrative? How does the relationship between text and image work? Is the book format the appropriate form for these debates?
Laraba Friedman's edible (only if one was very desperate) book of toast, Old Habits Never Die, in a limited edition of twenty-five, suggests not only the fragility of memory but places a very personal family memory – of an uncle's experience of food shortage in a Japanese internment camp – into the public domain. These works will – and are intended to – decay, like the eddies from a pebble thrown into a pool: the Zen philosophy of the captor is appropriated, captured. From desperation and annihilation something beautiful is born. At least for a short while.
Emily Artinian's books and the accompanying texts that bleed out onto the floor and walls, show how words and ideas (and books) cannot be confined to the page. Camilla ?en-K?n's projection of filmed pages onto a blank lecturn explores both the blankness of the page and the tabula rasa of the mind: are all the pages blank when we close the book? Do we project what we want to read onto blank pages? Does the reader always have to complete the book?
The exhibition had an unusual thematic coherence for a final master's show. It largely eschewed the almost inevitable tendency within book arts towards a crafts bias, and its exploitation of the installation possibilities of the book was remarkable.
Writer detail:
STEPHEN BURY
is Head of Modern English Collections at The British Library.
stephen.bury@bl.uk |
www.bl.uk
Venue detail:
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