Anne Covell , hand-drawn card illustrations, Book Art

Anne Covell, Natural Order - A Game of Pairs, Artists book & card game, 30 hand-drawn card illustrations, learning guide and case letterpress printed from polymer, 8.1 cm x 6.25 cm x 1.25 cm, 2012

Anne Covell , accordion handmade kozo, Book Art

Anne Covell, Raking Light, Accordion, letterpress linoleum reduction, handmade kozo, 12.5 cm x 8.75 cm x .65 cm, 2012

Banoo Batliboi, abstraction of book art, Digital print

Banoo Batliboi, Age of Shiva, Digital print on metallic paper, 47 cm x 37 cm, 2014

Banoo Batliboi, Pacific patterns, Digital print on metallic paper, 47 cm x 37 cm, 2014

Banoo Batliboi, The travel book, Digital print on metalic paper, 47 cm x 37 cm, 2014

Banoo Batliboi, Vintage leather bound books folded anew

Banoo Batliboi, Deep Waves, Vintage leather bound books folded anew, 35 cm x 9 cm x 11 cm, 2013

Banoo Batliboi, Three Butterflies, Vintage leather bound books folded anew 40 cm X 22.5 cm X 27.5 cm, 2014

Deng Yifu, Diplomatic History (Y1145-Gun), Book and Perspex with Screws, 20.3 cm x 14 cm x 4.2 cm, 2003-05

Deng Yifu, M92SM92FS-Gun, Book and Perspex with Screws, 21.5 cm x 14 cm x 2 cm, 2003-05

Jagath Weerasinghe, Accordion book, mixed media drawings

Jagath Weerasinghe, Cause of Illness, Mixed media on paper , 315 cm x 31.5 cm, 2011

Kingsley Gunatillake, book art, bullet book

Kingsley Gunatillake, Bullet Book - Lanka Janthawa (Sri Lankan people), Book, empty bullets, gold, 28 cm x 21 cm, 2014

Kingsley Gunatillake, book art, wood & gold

Kingsley Gunatillake, Displaced, Book, wood & gold, 20 cm x 15 cm, 2013

Liz Fernando, book art, Digital Photographs

Liz Fernando, Trincomalee - My father’s stories and the lost photographs, Digital Photographs, 24 cm x 21 cm (77 pages), 2012

Meera Devidayal, Artist book, digital print

Meera Devidayal, Into the Rose Garden, Artist book, Digital print on photo paper, 2014

Radhika H. & Shanika P. , Artist Book, digital print

Radhika H. & Shanika P. , Her stories- Mother's voices of resilience and hope, Digital Print. 12 cm x 9.5 cm, 50 pages (from the edition of 100) 2014

Samanta Batra Mehta, Antiquarian books, Ink, graphite, gesso

Samanta Batra Mehta, The Anthropology of Time, Antiquarian books, Ink, graphite, gesso, 23k gold leaf , plastic plants, 2012

Samit Das, Hand stitched Unique book art

Samit Das, Vibrations and Silence-4, Card board egg box & paper, Hand stitched Unique Artwork, 16.5 cm x 11 cm x 6.5 cm (Egg box), variable when unfolded, 2002

Samit Das, Drawing ink on acid free handmade paper, book art

Samit Das, Vibrations and Silence-5, Drawing ink on acid free handmade paper, pencil, cut out and burnt lines, Set of two books, Unique artist books, 21 cm x 15 cm x 3 cm and 21 cm x 15 cm x 2 cm, 2013

Sathyanand Mohan, Chronical, archival photographs

Sathyanand Mohan , Chronical, set of 25 photographs, 40 cm x 60 cm (each), 2013

Smriti Choudhary, accordion book art, ink on paper

Smriti Choudhary, In the forest, Ink on paper, 25 cm x 350 cm, 2014

Tanmoy Samanta, Recycled book, paperboard & gouache

Tanmoy Samanta, Shadow Palace, Recycled book, paperboard & gouache on rice paper, 25 cm x 35 cm x 2.5 cm, 2014

Tanmoy Samanta, The Cartographer's Paradox, Recycled book, paperboard & gouache on rice paper, 22.5 cm x 37.5 cm x 2.5 cm, 2014

Zach Stensen, Elementary Astronomy, Dryfire Press, 15.7 cm x 23.2 cm, 29 pages Edition of 22, 2011

Installation

Reading Room, Mumbai

FREEING THE BOOK

"The Book - a traditional object, which nevertheless is capable of the most contemporary adaptation, yet retains an aesthetic dimension"
- Mabel Kaufmann, The Book as Art and Idea

"(...) one of the finest memories of a collector is the moment when he rescued a book to which he might never have given a thought, much less a wishful look, because he found it lonely and abandoned on the marketplace and bought it to give it its freedom..." - Walter Benjamin, Illuminations

As a child I would sit with my grandfather for hours in what I used to call his 'book room.' That is where I learned to love the smell of books. I was taught not to fold over, or 'dog-ear' the pages of books to mark the page I stopped reading at, and discovered with fascination that silver fish could make the most beautiful patterns of tiny holes that sunk deepinto the pages of a book. I learned the posture of reading old school: to sit upright, to hold the spine of a book and to slip my index finger under the page in readiness to turn over. Already, for my grandfather, and through him, for me - the book was art, with its accompanying practice, mode of engagement and embodied experience.

Perhaps that is why when Walter Benjamin writes of the collector of books unpacking his library, and he speaks of an accompanying mood that is not elegiac, rather that of anticipation, it feels almost as if he picked the most apt word to describe the sensory experience of confronting a book. This sense of anticipation, I feel,isthe mood to be carried onintoexperiencing the book as contemporary art.

Art historian and critic Johanna Drucker is quoted to have referred to book art as "the quintessential 20th century art form." The book as a form of artistic expression has been a part of evolutionary moments of contemporary art from Russian futurism to feminist art to conceptual art and performance art, and the number of artists using books as a medium in art is increasing. And yet, book art remains more on the peripheries of contemporary art institutions, communities, practice and audiences - especially in the Asian region.

The premise of this essay is thus to consider the contemporary art positioning, and the many interpretations, of the book as an art object and its cultural and political agency. It seeks to find ways of understanding book art, and explore paradigms of reading, and interpreting work produced in this context. While the delineation of the book as art object is contextualised within a more global discussion - the project here is to extend the thinking to contemporary exhibition curation and exhibition making in the South Asian Region, bringing into focus the philosophy of the 'Reading Room.'

Inside the 'Reading Room'

In its articulation, the 'Reading Room' engages the idea of an active, working studio (invoking book art histories in antecedent bookmaking practices - papermaking, illustration, binding and printing); it also evokes the inherently multi sensory, experiential dynamic of the book. The notion of the 'Reading Room' focuses the approach to the exhibition as one that considers the specific history of 'reading practice' associated with the book, its materiality, its proximity to everyday life and its suggestion of a kind of intimacy. It even goes so far as to suggest interaction, thus articulating - in the invitation to participate in art - a democratising principle.

Jules Prown recommends that, in art contexts, when objects are not available for physical investigation, perceptions regarding sensory aspects "must be done imaginatively and empathetically." This is important, she notes, because in most cases, books in exhibitions are often placed behind glass to protect them from damage that might occur from handling (in Burkhart, 2006, p.263). And so, in the 'Reading Room,' the possibility of 'handling' the work becomes a politic engaged with. This is only scratching at the surface of the site of resistance (which will be discussed in more detail later) that is the book in art.

2014

Artists

Anne Covell
Banoo Batliboi
Deng-Yifu
Jagath Weeresinghe
Kingsley Gunatillake
Layla Gonaduwa
Liz Fernando
Meera Devidayal
Radhika Heetiarachi & Shanika Perera
Samanta Batra Mehta
Samit Das
Satyanand Mohan
Smriti Choudhary
Tanmoy Samanta
Zach Stensen

< Back

Samit Das, Vibrations and Silence-4, Card board egg box & paper, Hand stitched Unique Artwork, 16.5 cm x 11 cm x 6.5 cm (Egg box), variable when unfolded, 2002

< Back