Book selected: The Hand of Ethelberta, by Thomas Hardy
New title: Lost and Found
I was interested to discover that the book I had been sent contained what is widely reputed to be Thomas Hardy’s least successful work. Coupled with the paperback format, which was certainly well thumbed, I felt uncertain as to what my starting point would be. I had hoped to work with the notion of book as object, however, the tatty, misshapen and flexible nature of the text mitigated against this. I would need to think again.
The book arrived whilst I was putting together the final exhibition for my MA in Art, Craft and Design Education. The focus of my work had been on memory and identity which I’d explored through collage, photography, painting and assemblage. I was inspired by the work of Joseph Cornell and wrote a fictional piece about an encounter with his mother as part of my dissertation.
Christmas came and went and still the text sat on my studio table, looking rather abandoned. I had kept its cardboard packaging because of an interest in postmarks and ephemera, tucking this neatly beneath the book. Perhaps I harboured secret desires to send it back where it came from. Yet the book no longer had a real home.
After some time, I spontaneously took two boxes which had previously stored coloured glass Christmas decorations and placed them together, as if hinged. I had also collected a number of tiny cardboard boxes, some of which fitted well into the cavities. A process had begun. I mixed cellulose paste into an old plastic cake box and started to tear the pages of the book up. The first page was the most difficult to handle, the book would never make sense to a reader again.
When my eldest daughter came to ask what I was planning to do next, I told her I had no idea, but that I knew if I kept going something would happen. Within a short space of time, I became absorbed by the interiors of the boxes, and started to make an emotional engagement with the little spaces. My mother had brought some materials to my MA exhibition ‘Cabinet’, which were added at the last minute, to the installation I’d created. She had found her old school nametapes and copied me some pages from my grandfather’s diary, including a small photograph of my grandmother Doris holding her as a small girl. Her brother is also in the picture. And so these few items were to become the starting point of this new work.
I felt all of these materials connected strongly with my feelings about Hardy’s novel. It described Ethelberta’s struggle, her desire to express herself as a poet. I would use pages from the text to encase different aspects of female identity, and the struggle for self-knowledge and self-expression. I have often used tape measures in my work and see them as a form of time line, representing the ages and stages of a woman’s life.
It seemed natural to place my mother’s maiden name on the front of the box. The work is really a homage to her and besides which, it was my mother who first introduced me to the incredible women brought to life in the work of Thomas Hardy.
Rachel Williamson
23.2.07
web : www.rachelwilliamson.co.uk
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