& Artists' book launch at the CFPR
School of Art, Media and Design, UWE Bristol:
17th December - 31st January 2003
Andrew Eason
'Interpreter - Artists' Books 1999-2002'
Artists' books have become the vehicle of choice for me to explore and communicate my ideas. They have several aspects unique to the form which I've found of enormous interest.
For one, they have identities which mark them out as somewhat self contained. Books in an exhibition are discrete artistic objects in a way that (say) a painting arguably isn't. (Such a painting is part of its exhibition.) Each book has an inner logic, an encapsulated set of values that I find satisfying. Yet the books are not isolated from each other. One book relates to another in the usual art-formal ways, but also, because of their bookishness, the books suggest relationships in a scholarly sense. I like this, because of the way it chimes with the way I research and produce my books. This in a sense is the larger-scale for me: if I see my books as a group, they are forming a library, a body of research.
Another aspect of artists' books is their innate capability to deal coherently with complex narrative form. Again, this chimes with my intentions and mode of producing the books. It's my usual practice to start with a given text or resource: a poem, event, a set of pictures, a word. The text has its own modes and rhythms which I try to identify and understand.
When I research a book what I'm looking for are the chinks of individuality in my sources: the departures from form, the coincidences, the offhand comments, the suggestive etymology... I'll reply to these researches in time, producing images, writing, exploring the background to the text. As I work, the data begins to form around the "chinks" I mentioned earlier. Thus, a single line from the Anglo-Saxon poem "The Battle of Maldon" became the book "Tiercel" . A Chinese painting of a horse in the Metropolitan Museum of Art gathered diverse materials from astrology to personal history, all because of a particular interpretation of another painting contemporary with it, and became the book "Night-Shining White".
I'm continuing to work in this manner on new books, but I'm being drawn increasingly towards work which involves more than one book, and books which work in conjunction with other media. To that end I've begun researches and collaborations which I hope to resolve into exhibitions involving a handful of different books on a central theme, accompanied by various digital media. I'm as interested in the contradictions as I am in the harmonies that such an array would produce. When I mention my interest in seeing my books as a "library", as a body of research, I am signalling my interest in the contradictory characteristics of history.
Books are discrete, yet never isolated. They purport to be sufficient in themselves, but they never really are. I find the same things in my original sources. My artist's books are the product of a mission of individual interpretation.
'The Remembrancer' a new book by Andrew Eason will also be launched in the Print Centre on:
Tuesday 17th December, 5 - 7pm.
You can contact Andrew Eason at:
e-mail: andreweason@hotmail.com
or to see more of his work, visit Andrew's website at: www.andreweason.com
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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