Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Millenium Library
Norfolk and Norwich
6 January – 6 July
Reviewed by: Jennifer Kabat
Catherine Cookson has suffered two grave dishonors this year: first JK Rowling replaced her as the UK libraries' most borrowed author – upsetting Cookson's seventeen-year run in the top spot – and now she's had her novels hacked apart, the pages pulled out and replaced with – aptly enough – a box of tissues. This tissue terrorism, more commonly called an intervention, is taking place in Norwich's public library as part of a conceptual art project, 'Shelf Life' – clearly change is afoot in the nation's libraries.
'Shelf Life' is a collaboration between artist Anna Townley and poet Lawrence Bradby, it's location, a shiny new glass and steel building which manages to avoid the typical institutional, dusty, 'library' feel; people drop in to read magazines and teens chat each other up. Being in such a location and using this as the point of the project, Townley and Bradby break down the barriers and preconceptions people have about art – and books.
On the ground floor in the Express Library, the duo play with the idea of a quick read, altering books accordingly. One volume of a Dick Francis trilogy has had its pages removed and replaced with foam, so it will be lighter; they ran a band saw through another making the book only two inches wide; while the third has had every last word from the facing page cut out and pasted in the front so it can be speed read.
Upstairs the project works a bit more like a treasure hunt. One thousand bookmarks have been placed in different volumes throughout the library. The green slips each have a poem by Bradby written on them (thirty poems in all meditating on libraries' unspoken rules – like whispering; the card catalogue and Dewey decimal system; and observations of people). On the flip side of the bookmarks a note says, "Now go to. . ." and lists a card catalogue number.
Following the number, you will find another tome which will either direct you further in your hunt or to a book which has been 'reconfigured' – like the yoga manual that creaks when you open it. One James Ellroy mystery has been accosted by a price gun: the total number of dead bodies in the book has been divided by the book's cost, so you know its cost per murder; the pricing gun was used to stamp each murder with its value – 8 pence. These reconfigured books (sixty-four in all) will send you to another altered book which will direct you to the guest books where visitors can sign in, draw their reactions, stick their chewing gum and respond to the exhibition.
'Shelf Life' was undertaken with local arts grants and the help of Norwich's head librarian. The show is a clever play on systems of organisation (a big focus of Townley's work, whose dyslexia led her to an interest in how information is coded). At the end of the project Townley and Bradby will document the show in a new volume which they will give to the library to keep on its shelves. Unfortunately being just one book, it will never manage to rival Cookson's record.
Writer detail:
JENNIFER KABAT
is a writer based in London and Norwich
Venue detail:
Norfolk County Council
The Forum, Millennium Plain, NORWICH NR2 1AW
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