|
Books: Q. How did you start making books? A. Most of my work at the time was video and performance and I missed the physicality of making an object. Q. What do you like about books/artist books? A. I like most books. I like what books stand for. I like their continuous presence as objects. I like that they take space and can be touched. I like the look of books on shelf. There appears order even if the books were not arranged. I like the thought that is present in a book. I like the continuity, that pages indicate that there is more on the other side. I like the appearance of letters and the way they sit in row after row to give a page a rectangle within rectangle. |
|
Q. How are the books you make related to your other works? A. It is the audience. My works look for an exchange with the reader/viewer. I think of the ideal viewer as one who is implicated in the work. My perfect viewer is a 70-year-old attention loving curious child. For instance, with Swinging Susan the reader turns the page repeatedly following a circular text and consequently performing a circular hand movement. Short films: My empathy with words and viewer spilt into my 101 works. I wrote subtitles as the only image on the screen. The writing was taken from conversations I had with an intelligent and witty man while looking at paintings at an exhibition at Tate Modern. Sophie Loss: I like people, solo inward travels and books: people led me to starting AMBruno with Mary Yacoob, seclusion is where things first happen and books are an entry to thoughts and plots, all locked/contained in an object until opened. I aspire to works that place two disparate elements in tension in the same space, a place made up of an existing surface and an un-visible surface imagined on top/over/under it. Sometimes the viewer is one of these elements. At present I am working on two projects, one photographic and the other in printmaking. I am also preparing for the AMBruno review show at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UWE, Bristol. |
|
Death and life. You look but I know. is part of AMBruno's Red collection. Dead birds do not leave traces. The cherries and redcurrants live forever - they stain, transfer and mark this present. You are holding the closed book, go on open it, and take in what you have caused but not yet witnessed. Based on still-life painting by Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1712) and possible seepage from it - an encounter of verso and recto pages. |
|
Factum no. 24 is part of AMBruno's Stills collection of limited edition prints. In Jean-Luc Godard's film Les Carabiniers a cinema spectator attempts to touch the projected image, only to pull down the screen; both the screen and the paper are sites of collapsed illusion. Digital print and embossing |
|
Escapade is part of AMBruno's words collection. François Rabelais enjoyed words, they romp along together with his larger than life characters, and in this little book these words of words veer off the allotted path, to the ends of their world of paper, and back. |
|
Do To Do is part of AMBruno's List etc. collection. This is a self-portrait of a writer attempting to rein in all the many imperatives by listing them. In this re-presentation, the content is lost but form gained. Edition of 12. Colour digital prints. |
|
First Poem of Emptiness is part of AMBruno's I'm telling you stories. Trust me collection of limited edition prints. A response to the first of Anatoly Korolyov's Three Poems of Emptiness in Russian. Vertical drawn lines and a blocked out white lacuna - corresponding to words I do not understand. Screenprint on Fabriano 300gsm. |
|
16/sixteen is part of AMBruno's 16 collection. Children's games, Brueghel, 16 characters maybe an alphabet. |
|
O-I is part of AMBruno's Black Circle collection. Squeezed idea but dancing. How a solid black circle becomes a line. Edition of 25. Digital print. Sewn pamphlet. |
|
Nut; Off; Fly are part of AMBruno's One-Fold Books collection. Notes of joy on having constraints to work against/with, or let me loose on a giant canvas stretched between cerebration and where the discus falls. One of three books with Nut and Fly , the fold in Off follows its internal logic rather than the customary one. The cover represents a book suggesting disorder - the image of a man at a skewed angle to the page in that book is, in the inside spread, aligned to this book. Open edition. Digital print. |
|
If Blue is part of AMBruno's Blue collection. Tossing the uncertain if in the air where it coloured the blue into maybes, greens, black cats and possibles. Somewhere between if and blue there is an unreliable/dodgy/awkward/changeable world of neither word nor exclusively images. |
|
|
|
Swinging Susan: Printed with text going around the card as a spiral, unedited version of all but lexicographer's Sunday. Edition of 150. Digital print. Single card in wrap-round cover. |
|
The Aporia Trilogy consists of three books/narratives each reduced to their essence through the use of a minimal number of words. Such succinctness in language tends to lead to either a precision or an openness of meaning. In this case such potential in reading(s) is apparently subverted by the formal partition of each sentence/story onto separate cards, with only a few words on each interchangeable page. Do the words thus gain freedom from the author's established narrative or do the readers notice, notwithstanding diverse attempted combinations of arrangement, that the writer has imposed a structure that does not allow change in the story itself. Cicerone: John McDowall. Letterpress set in Silverado by Neil Crawford. Three sets of loose cards in folded wallets. Printed and bound by Book Works. Limited edition of 15. |
|
Francesca's First Husband is an exploration of the outer limits of legibility and narrative. The narrative is reduced to its essence, inward using minimal number of words. The writing, on the other hand, is stretched outwards vertically and each letter flows over to the back of the sealed double pages thus being partially hidden. Screenprinted by John McDowall on Velin Arches Blanc 100% cotton paper. Stab binding under folded cover. Edition of 16. |
|
On the Wall: Subtitles are the only image on the screen. The text is extracted from transcribed conversations I had with an intelligent and witty man whilst looking at paintings at an exhibition at Tate Modern. Video. 101 seconds. |
|
Ah-ha 2: The coexistence, play and interaction of two elements; consisting of a drawn line on wall and projection. Installation with video projection 3 min 30 sec |
