2am, Effigy, Mundane, Tactile, Exposure, Heart, Window, Circular, Detailed, You, Creature, Clockwork

This is an exhibition as a book and a book as an exhibition, featuring work by the following second year students from the BA Fine Art course at Liverpool John Moores University: Niamh Bradley, Kimberley Clarke, Joy Clarke, Alicia Flanagan, Jennifer Harkness, Molly Kosutic, Amelia Penny, Elisa Sallis, Lucy Parrin, Sömmer Sofia, Steven Scull and Friday Swinchin.

The exhibition grew out of a series of workshop sessions that discussed the book as a creative site for presentation, looking at André Breton’s ‘La Révolution surréaliste’ to Seth Sieglaub’s pioneering achievements and beyond, as well as inquiring into a shared history of exhibitions sited in other unorthodox contexts.

Inspired by these sessions and responding to the restrictions imposed by the Coronavirus pandemic, the students have collectively initiated the exhibition with its particular mode of presentation and dissemination. The title is a collection of words that each student has chosen individually and responding to these words they have each made a number of artworks. Over 80 new artworks have been produced, with the words acting as guides, prompts and forms of inspiration at a time of isolation. 

 

Together, the exhibition celebrates not only the printed page but also acknowledges the growing digital presence of books to maximise publication and circulation. Using the context of the book to form a group exhibition, it allows the group of artists a place to present and be present.

 

(Adam Carr, Senior Lecturer, Curator and Writer)