Book Art

We got up at a reasonable hour in Manchester and indulged in a rather splendid buffet breakfast at our hotel, the highlights of which, for me, were the potato rosti. Absolutely delicious!

We then set out for home, where we stopped for a few minutes to feed and sort the cats, then I took the Wonderspouse to work and went to Scharwenka's house for lunch.

That evening the Wonderspouse's writing collective was doing poetry and book readings at a gallery in town. The gallery has, at the moment, a really cool exhibition of art created using books. You can see a bit more here.

I really loved the different colour books laid out on the floor in a spectral arrangement in the back room, but, as the evening wore on, I was most captivated by this creation, and the way it "grows" round the ceiling girder.

It frustrated me somewhat that I wasn't able to see the titles of the books. However, the most frustrating thing of all is that these are copies of old editions or some such, which, after the exhibition is finished, will be pulped. This makes me very cross - especially as there are charities who would like to have the books and send them to places in Africa where they can't afford to buy text books etc. Grrrrr!

The exhibition itself comprised this piece, another similar one - but only to chest height with an open top, two "flat" displays - the spectral one and one where the books were covered with quartz dust, and structuring of the space itself using 100 boxes of books to divide the space into "rooms". Yes, I did count the boxes!

I was a bit tired after such a long couple of days, but it was good tired! :-)