Friday, 27 December 2013

Artist's Book: READ




135mm x 190mm, containing 12 pages and printed endpapers.
Saddle-stitched, with red book-cloth bound hard cover with lasercut lime acrylic title: READ.

Bound into the book is a small red acrylic lasercut magnifying glass that slots into a small wage slip envelope bound into the back inside cover.
Title page has a library-style insert, dated, embossed, numbered and signed.

The book also contains a bookmark to be used as a aide memoire.
Brighton, First edition of ten produced in 2012.

This book was created for the exhibition Beyond Dickens. This exhibition of international artists' books was held in Portsmouth in November 2012 as part of the Dickens bicentenary celebrations held in the town (Dicken's birthplace).

READ was inspired by Our Mutual Friend and takes the first 20 pages of this novel but hides within them a Dickens' quote about the act of reading. The quote describes reading as being like a code, whereby the initiated can open the world of books. The quote is hidden word by word on each page in pale turquoise that can only be seen clearly when viewed through the red lense on of the magnifying glass (see images below). The endpapers are images of monochrome violent waters since Our Mutual Friend begins and ends with drownings.