Things Found In Books (TFIB)
This is a project begun in 2013 which shows, at its most fundamental level, neglegted or forgotten items left in books, probably as makeshift bookmarks or placed there absent-mindedly for safe keeping. It has proceed since then in a number of different stages subtly different from the other. As most of the books illustrated were sourced from libraries and used book stores, it straddles a public/private divide. Although the books are in public circulation the ‘lost’ bookmarks are personal insofar as they belong to an unknown individual but they often contain notes to self or insights into unseen lives.
The artist was at the time also a career librarian of long standing, so this is a project steeped in the minutiae of a daily routine in a field dedicated to order, preservation and predictability. These blips, interrupting the smooth flow of the texts are not unlike analogue glitches disturbing the normal operation of the library. Visually the flat surfaces of these photographs expose many layers; those of the opened pages the inner edges of the dust jackets, the sense of the three-dimensionality of the book itself and finally the object in question, be it a bus ticket, a baloon or used tissue.
Another element comes into being through the vagaries of chance and synergy. There is often an interplay between the items and the book, visually or textually. Images and colours may complement, fuse or counteract each other. The text or subject of the book and the note/postcard/bookmark can resonate in extraordinary and coincidental ways almost as if there was an unconscious cooperation between the artist and unknown hand of the previous user or owner.
Versions of the project were shown in NCAD (2014), and D:Light Studios (2015), while the most recent version was exhibited in a group show as part of the Belfast Exposed Futures programme in the Gallery of Photography, as it was then, in 2017.
There are two dummy books to date, the original artist book from the NCAD show in 2014, which was installed in an integrated handmade oak lectern, and a version co-produced with Read That Image in 2016. All of the bookmarks illustrated have been retained in a dedicated archive.
The project also acquired a new meaning due to the pandemic as it throws some light onto the nature of items such as these which circulate to many different people and households, carrying with them the traces of all those unseen contacts. It is only through the experience of Covid that the implication and possible consequences of this came be understood by a wider audience who would never have considered such things when availing of library services or buying second hand books. This, of course, reflects back to the earlier reference to the public/private interface.
Book Dummy in slipcase with facsimile of photograph found in book and insert with captions.