The Book: Materiality and Making

Sheena Calvert, Emma Dodson, Katherina Manolessou and Christine McCauley

One of the most recent exhibitions I've visited is in fact at my university in Gallery West and I am very proud to say that it's by four of my tutors. The whole exhibition has ben based on the physical book, each illustrator/artist taking a different approach to the theme. Not all the work was created specifically for this exhibition however all pieces of work fit it none the less.

In my mind it was quite a relief to see so much work which had been deliberately avoiding moving towards a digital format. Personally I worry about books going that way simply because technology isn't my favourite thing to deal with. This is why I like drawing - I like a pencil and paper. However I do believe how important it is to be aware of the technologic world so I'm not ruling it out either. 

One of the biggest things which stuck with me was how my tutors explained that by making things and going through a physical process you learn a lot more about how things work. There are usually a lot more mistakes too which you wouldn't get through technology, but because you learn more you understand how things work and hereford have a better understanding. 

I have written a few quotes along with a brief explanation of each tutors work. It's inspiring viewing the work which has been created by those who teach you. Not only can I understand them a little bit more but it's also bizarrely reassuring knowing they're so close.

Sheena

Sheena started the talk about her work which had started because she became interested in TIME. This developed onto the Canon of Western Thought and from that wanted to create  piece which was physically and visually very heavy. She (with her cousin who is a blacksmith) made a pure steel book which is filled with 22,000 pages. From this Sheena would like to 'perform a very cruel way of writing' as she described, and fill the pages with red hand writing. 

"There is beauty if cruelty."

"It's not about the object, it's about the process."

"Artists are often better philosophers than philosophers because they the text can't."

Emma

Emma displayed two projects, the first was about her interest in the spaces that no one else liked. She described that these spaces were often ignored, contained objects no one wanted or had thrown away and they were often dirtily spaces too. 

"I was aware that people hate those spaces."

She collected many of the objects within these places and turned them into something beautiful. She focused on round objects, because a round object is easy to look at - it isn't spiky or offensive, and simply ran them through the photocopier. Suddenly they became something very beautiful. And to finalise it all she collated the images together in a book. 

She also made a sculpture with the bottles she'd collected and put then back in the space where she'd originally found them. 

Her second piece was based around her children's books, which of course came as an even bigger interest for me. She had created an interactive, alphabetical book which contained doing words for the children to 'do'. For example A was 'Attach'. A genius idea which currently hasn't been published yet but I'm sure will be well on it's way very soon.

"What can I do to create an interactive book which helps the children understand what is going on in the pictures?"

"It's not that I don't understand the digital world but it's only half of my thinking. It's limited …"

"We live in a physical world. Despite being able to download music, people will still go and listen to music live."

Christine

Christine's project started with routes which were very close to home as she retraced the journey that her father had taken during the Second World War. She discovered that there was a battle which took place over a tennis court in Nagaland, where the British and Indian troops prevented the Japenese from invading India. She also visited some places which were a little dangerous to say the least but along the way discovered a wonderful materialistic culture that created beautiful things. 

"I wanted to make some sort of homage to the Naga."

"I wanted to make something physical, I didn't want to go digital."

She created many pieces on a printing press which she hadn't really done before but which was also a different experience - she explained it prevented her from over controlling the process.

"It was interesting working with text as stuff. Bits of metal, I could pick them up, I could control them a bit rather than them floating away."

"There's a magic moment of when the press hits the paper, revealing it is like 'I didn't know it would look like that.'"

Katherina

Finally Katherine finished with her work which started on her Phd. At the time she was focusing on apes and monkeys and had also been drawing from observation so wanted the work she created to be realistic. She later was drawing her son which gradually developed into a monkey and from that she created her book, now published with Macmillan, 'Zoom, Zoom, Zoom.' 

She explained about the process she went through of having to adapt her screen and silk printing process to suit what she wanted but also how she learnt from it.

"Sometimes you get happy accidents."

"Silk screening changes, a computer is the same and it's controlled. There is texture in printing."

"I wanted it to be an honest piece of work."

"Flat digital colour - I don't want to imitate someone else."

By the end of the discussion/exhibition it became very clear to me that none my tutors were anti-technology or digital, but they were explaining the importance of working in the physical world. That's how you learn and understand things better. For me, that's a wonderful way to treat it because I do understand the importance of knowing things like photoshop and InDesign but at the end of the day, I much prefer making 'STUFF'.  

:)