Book Report.

I really enjoyed the book talk with John at Vernon Street as I was a bit unsure about what to expect, as I saw books as generally the same size and shape. What interested me was that books dont have to look a certain way to be classed as a traditional 'book'.

For example, a girl in the previous year had made a book by placing a thin piece of paper around 3 pieces of folded A4 with small designs on each of them.
Also John presented a book which was held in a hard-back case; the book opened as just two images - one on each side, with no other pages between, which i found quite exciting as this allowed me to think of abstract ways of working, without having to concentrate on the typical book shape.

I also liked the accetate and paper book, which displayed photography of womens faces on each page, with an accetate page seperating each. On these accetate pages were letters placed over the womens mouth, which spelt 'silence is golden'. I liked the idea of the meaning behind this design, and wondered if the artist saw women and their role in socety in a postive or negative light, as i wondered why he used all women in the photographs when linking to the idea of speech.

I was quite sceptical of some of the ideas behind the books, as they were a little too abstract for my liking! However when John explained the reason behind one of his own books (the screen printed shapes on each page were shapes taken from books and magazines that covered the private parts in pornographic images) it allowed me to consider the reasoning behind most of the other abstract books that I had previously looked at quite negatively. Without this explanation, I would of seen it as simply shapes.

I particually liked the hand-made-paper book named 'Move over Darling' which had a woman embossed into the pages. The image was pressed into one page so that when you turned the page it was the same image but reversed, which in turn gave the impression of the woman turning over, leaving the final image as a woman on her front.

Jenny Callan