SALT+SHAW
Special Collections Room, Bower Ashton Library
7th December 2009 - 27th January 2010
Thinking about how location influences our artists’ books has led us to realise that most of our work is rooted in a specific place. We arrived at this point individually, via a long route through land art, sculpture, painting, writing, photography and drawing.
Now, as SALT+SHAW, working on location underpins our practice, either by responding to or identifying an environment to explore. We have a history of travelling to cities and wild places, rummaging around in junk shops and museums, experiencing galleries or gardens and searching shorelines and river banks. Taking these places as starting points and adding more specifically to the list of locations, has resulted in a reflex action to collect objects and information, gather ideas, create journals, write automatically and make images. Our raw materials are then examined, expanded and honed, gradually revealing their content, narrative and structure.
We have developed ways of making books together, either led by one of us and underpinned by mutual support, or co-produced as a joint piece through a process of negotiation, discussion and sheer bloody mindedness.
The book structure seems, in retrospect, an obvious format for our work; combining our divergent interests and ways of working. The process of construction is vital – the physicality of making, the creative development of the structure and its inextricably linked contents. Experimentation and diversity remain essential throughout. Our work is tactile and intimate, revealing and enclosing its stories through words, pictures, found objects, collage, drawing and print. We produce artefact books in small editions, which ask the viewer to engage, discover, make connections and take up challenges.
Our books combine a sensory and conceptual exploration. The use of leather, wood, paper, plastic, wire, fabric or metal. The narrative of words, images and found objects. The sound of a cover opening, the creak of metal hinges, the slap of wood shutting and the crispness of pages turning. The smell of polished wood and tanned hide. The discovery of hidden text.
‘9 Things To Do On Holiday’
A pamphlet book of two halves, narrating one week in Dumfries and Galloway during August 2008, but also referencing time spent there over a much longer period. One half of this book uses text, the other half images.
Edition of 24
‘Klara and the Angel’
Prague has frozen over and the snow is still falling. Klara must help her mother to polish the candlesticks in the church. Later, on an errand across the darkening city, there are unexpected consequences when Klara meets her guardian angel. A hardback concertina book containing a short story, images and scanned objects. Edition of 10
‘Ocean Reveries’
The draw and fear of the sea. We stand and stare on the edge of the water; attracted and repulsed. The second of our ‘dangerous’ books - a hard-to-handle piece, with a sharp, welded-wire cover, poem and DVD.
Edition of 9
‘Meniscus’
We dare to step into the sea - immersed in the rhythm and ebb and flow. The fear and excitement of swimming in an open space. A moment without distraction. This hardback, complex concertina book conceals a poem, inserts of colour and DVD.
Edition of 30
back