Books and storytelling have always been important to me. While my parents had little interest in art, they encouraged reading and I devoured everything – from comics and magazines to novels, literature and encyclopaedias – as a means of escape, adventure and seeing worlds beyond my own. The power that fiction can have in transporting the self from one world to another is, as Mike Nelson describes: “… the fact that you could be sitting in an armchair and yet be on the high seas or in a war. The potential of trying to unleash that in a sculptural form is very exciting.”1
Books influencing my project were many, but particularly the following children’s publications for their ability to still excite me today:
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe. Shipwrecked on a tropical island, Crusoe built his own kingdom from the island’s resources.
The Secret Garden and A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett. The child protagonists, having experienced traumas, go on to create their own worlds, real and imaginary.
The Broons (top right). A comic-strip Scottish family, who held great affection for each other, despite life’s everyday challenges.
More contemporary books include:
Cougar Annie’s Garden, Margaret Horsfield (bottom right). The real-life story of an early 20th-century pioneer who, despite hardships, created a nursery garden in the wilds of Vancouver Island.
People from my Neighbourhood, Hiromi Kawakami. Based in Japan, this collection of short stories is narrated by a child who describes the quirky incidents of friends in her local area that combine the real with the fantastical.
This pastime was crucial during the Covid lockdowns and online purchases poured through the letterbox. But not only were the books important for feeding my mind; the large amount of packaging I accumulated was the trigger for reactivating my practice. I was particularly attracted to the malleability of the beige-coloured mailer envelopes, which I would dismantle for surfaces to draw on, and rip apart and reassemble to make collages and naïve-style greetings cards. The ‘beigeness’ is important for me as a sculptural material, as I found with my cardboard project Prelude in second year, because it allows: 1, the artist to see the item’s potential beyond its present manifestation; and 2, the viewers to develop their own relationship with the artwork.
The first pop-up element of the first lockdown sketchbook (background) based on my dissertation topic of afternoon tea. Photo Shirley A
With my life-long love of reading and immersing myself in stories, a book being incorporated into the major project was inevitable. Turning it into a sculptural form began as a way of setting my dissertation topic, afternoon tea, in a 3D format, with the mechanics of reading – the turning of pages – and the anticipation of what the next page will reveal crucial elements in expanding viewers’ involvement with my work. I also wanted to include my origami exercises, another lockdown project, as pop-up elements that will add extra dimensions of interactivity, curiosity and surprise.
A giant pop-up book excites me, and given that installations are my practice, setting it within its own story will allow the story to be expanded through pop-up structures, and secret hidey holes and doors that open to reveal other narrative details.
1 Mike Nelson in ‘How artist Mike Nelson turns traffic cones, old vehicles, and outdated machines into art’, Art Basel, <https://www.artbasel.com/stories/meet-the-artists-mike-nelson> accessed 8 May 2023