Time creates history and time changes history. From existing texts visual artist Nicola Dale painstakingly carves a new history, both for the texts themselves and for the those of us lucky enough to consume them.
A Secret Heliotropism, 2006. Hand cut found book; full color, 320 pagesUsing a Walter Benjamin quote from his ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ as a starting point Dale took a copy of “The People’s Century” and a very small pair of scissors and transformed the 320 page history book from a mass produced object to a unique piece of book art. Over the course of a year, each page was hand cut into a leaf pattern so that “the leaves (pun intended) stretch out from the book towards a source of natural sunlight, as though the book itself were growing and changing in the same way history does.”
“The leaves I had created were a reminder of the book’s historical origins: trees turned to paper and symbolically back again. The work also has its own secret mechanism, as I created a pattern which allows the pages to be folded down flat and put back into their cover to transform once more into an ordinary looking book.”
Telling the Truth About History, But Not About the Past, 2007altered hardback book, book jacket measures 16cm x 21.5cm
The Book That Reads Itself, 2007“Once upon a time there will only be the book which reads itself..”
Here it is not so much history but the future that concerns Dale. Will time and technology continue its onslaught on the physical book? As readership continues it decline will books need to ultimately engage themselves to fulfill their mission?
“The artist’s books I make (part of a wider artistic practice) deal with the themes of originality, authorship and repetition not because I think everything has already been said, but because there is always something to add to the conversation, by way of a little rearrangement to the order of things.”
This is good stuff!
Dale at Axisweb
Piece in issue 5 of STATIC the web resource of the London Consortium
Dale at Artists Books Online
short Q&A with Dale at artselector