School of Art, Media and Design, UWE Bristol:
7th July - 18th August 2003
Guy Begbie
Book Works
A mapping process in a city locality often becomes the starting and finishing point for Guy Begbie's book works.
Walking routes as research lead to a point where literally and conceptually the place becomes a matrix. Two dimensional basic A to Z maps are enlarged and transformed into three dimensional representations through a process of screenprinting, routering, vacuum moulding and casting in paper, plaster and lead. In some cases the resulting 3D artifacts are then scanned and screen printed as colour separations for the page.
In the act of reading maps, one may prompt a familiar fleeting pang of recognition making a place quantifiable by recalling it through personal memory. Maps have an intertextual dimension where meaning can cross boundaries of place. In Begbie's book "Inside / Outside / This Place / That Place" blurring the parameters of the built environment, the double spread in the centre of the book visually blends the interior space of a building with the landscape of its exterior. Other pages in this book draw parallels between the landscape and the formal book structure.
Map casts are a common factor in Guy Begbie's books and architectural book structures. These have the irregular edge or perimeters of the found fragment or shard. This characteristic serves to emphasise the lack of a frame where meaning runs off the edge into a void where anything can happen in an abstract space that lies beyond the self-containment of the urban environment. Given the material similarity to the excavated artefact or shard, the cast map alludes to the revealing of historical layers inherent within the city.
The "Redcliffe Effigies" series of artists' books reference the found artefact or fabricated map cast. Researching the archives to investigate the nature of archaeological excavation in a specific city location, the artist has examined the way histories are interpreted and constructed in an attempt to define the notion of time and place both real and imagined.
These books present photographic documentation of a specific public building as digital film stills combined with archaeological and pared down descriptive texts evoking thoughts on observing and being observed in a city environment.
These works use the both the intimate and formal compositional structure of the book imbued with objective fact and a subjective poetic attempt to record the ephemeral moment of a specific time and place.
Redcliffe effigies 2000, open edition
Through an interdisciplinary practice, Guy Begbie attempts to constantly redefine the parameters of the book, making printed editioned artists' books, unique mixed media books, sculptural book objects and site specific book works made to enable the viewer to engage with time based elements, through the use of digital sound and the moving image. Using book structures, Begbie's work is produced as an investigation of -relationships between geographical location, the built environment, its inhabitants and cultural production.
The mapping process in "Redcliffe Effigies" concentrates on an area within the locality of a city centre, a public space. However with journeys delineated with poured paint mediums onto the cast map roads, the artist intending to set up a discourse, made detours on the defined routes from the public space leading to a domestic, more private residential space in another part of the city.
In the series "Domestic Interiors" Begbie presents photographic documentation of specific sites or fixtures within the rooms of the house he and his family live in. These digital Stills are sequenced with pages containing dry architectural quotes and minimal descriptive texts evoking the artists' collective experience of ten years of living in this building. He has an intimate knowledge of its more recent history, fabric, structure and links to the outside world. The connection between his memory and this house is fundamental to aspects of a domestic tradition and popular values.
After shooting video and writing texts that both document fixtures and describe the experience of being in familiar domestic rooms, the artist uses this inventory to prepare moulds and make actual casts of architectural details. The collection of casts present the possibility to make the physical private realities of the house public. The resulting 3D casts have been digitally scanned and then resourced for a series of printed artists' books in which pared down texts appear presented in column layouts, an oblique poetic cross referencing.
The actual location of a particular building within the artists' experience has variable contexts given the transient nature of journeys between the building and elsewhere. A governing time based book structure immediately imposes implications of past histories, the here and now of the present and a projected prognosis for the future.
The direct poignant experience of a specific place in the artists' memory is a collective layering of incident and the fleeting moment. In works such as 'Portus Abonae' text resonates within the painterly imagery in a non-linear narrative. As a distillation of experience, this work in a filmic frame by frame format and the other artists' books in this series, aim to capture the fleeting moment, the equivalent of a visual haiku.
When interpreting an architectural structure through site-specific practice, the artist engages with the formal aspects of that built environment. Codex book form structures historically have very formal attributes. While many of his books are sewn along one edge, using traditional binding techniques, Begbie makes other unique works, folded paper engineered forms and architectural book structures that parody the codex book format, combining paper and cloth based bindery materials with cast elements in plaster, beeswax and lead. These sculptural book objects make reference to methods in which to examine appropriate parallels between both the traditional book and architectural structures. Conceptually they investigate ways in which the book form may hold and contain the experience of buildings and the landscape.
Digital stills and video provide Guy Begbie with raw source material to be edited and used in the context of the physical codex book format with additional texts or to be shown as projected autonomous video shorts. In works such as "House of Memory", both in its book and video short form, contemporary footage of a specific place is often intercut with footage of traditional notions of that particular landscape. This is achieved through historical re-enactment and footage of details of historical paintings depicting the chosen location, a process that evokes the passage of time in relation to the geographical space.
Compositionally the video works explore formats of the book utilising text mimicking the page and placing sound as a structural device between image and text. As in the case of 'BS6 6HR Domestic Interior" where traditional notions of landscape are challenged as the fields of sound and image trace the activated mechanism of the book.
Both books and the moving image are time based, a moving image may be activated through the simple device of a flip book. In video works as in the actual book a process of re-reading or reviewing a passage (of time) becomes possible through the use of repetition in editing.
The video bookwork activation "Reading Writing" was made to enable the viewer to engage with time based elements of the book experience. Through the use of digital sound and the moving image, "Reading Writing" documents the passage of hand and eye through a cryptic narrative over a sequence of pages.
Begbie's Recent works return to the use of shooting video as starting point to produce a bound document. The detachment from the population of a familiar public environment or locality has been replaced by people watching in an unfamiliar city. The "New York Dolls" series of flip books (detail above) provoke pertinent questions about issues of anonymity, surveillance, voyeurism and the fleeting moment. Repetition in the editing of single frames has produced choreographed momentary movement which has been translated into a cinematic flip book structure.
Using combinations of a multi disciplinary practice Guy Begbie challenges and constantly redefines the shifting parameters of the book form through interpretations alluding to landscape, the manmade geography of the city, and the inside and outside of its public and domestic architectural structures.
For more information on this, or any of the Artists Book Events at CFPR, please contact:
Research Associate for Artists' Books
Centre for Fine Print Research UWE, Bristol
Faculty of Art, Media and Design
Kennel Lodge Road
Bristol
BS3 2JT
UK
Tel: +44 (0)117 344 4747
Fax: +44 (0)117 344 4824
Sarah.Bodman@uwe.ac.uk
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