Barbara Steele

Artist's Bookworks

As part of my art practice I produce artist's bookworks.

I started to make bookworks to document my site specific work.  Many of these installations consisted of pieces of joss paper, individually illustrated with images and words about the site, made by myself and the general public.  To document the project it was appropriate to make these 'pages' into a handmade artist's bookwork.

Detail from installation at Rocombe Farm

Hand made artist's bookworks documenting site specific installations

exhibited at Town Mills Gallery, Lyme Regis, Dorset

Hand made artist's bookworks exhibition at Royal Albert Museum, Exeter, Devon

 'A Sense of Place' series

 combines my photographic images together with

 the words/poems/thoughts from the viewing public at the projects 

'A Sense of Place: Rocombe Farm'

'I miss the cows, the dripping tongues, the smell of slippy shit'

image and text extracted from 'A Sense of Place: Rocombe Farm'

Prints are available from this bookwork (see print section)

'A Sense of Place: Brimblecombe's Cider Farm' 

'history/granite pillar/stillness'

image and text extracted from 'Brimblecombe's Cider Farm'

Prints are available from this bookwork (see print section)

'Traces'

 is a photographic exploration of the littoral

'Trace destined, like everything, to disappear from itself': Derrida

image and text extracted from 'Traces'

'Mirror Pool'

 is a photographic exploration of the elements

'surreptitiously/in the long grass/the mirror pool/catches the elements'

image and text extracted from 'Mirror Pool'

Hand made artist's bookworks exhibition at Royal Albert Museum, Exeter, Devon

'Secrets', 'Con(s)ealed', 'Fragments' and 'Layers'

 are experimental explorations into the meaning of the word 'bookworks'

Con(s)ealed

joss paper with text and images sealed in wax and placed in perspex box

Fragments

burnt joss paper with text and images placed in perspex box

Secrets

shredded and/or bundled joss paper with text and images placed perspex box

Layers

This work took, as a starting point, the premise that pages in a book are layers that both reveal and conceal

The images and text are short extracts from my two artist's books 'Traces' and 'Mirror Pool' 

which deal with surfaces, reflections, layers, fragments - revealing and concealing.

Site Specific Artist's Bookworks

 in response to walks at West Town Farm

A Walk Around the Greenhouse at West Town Farm

Small concertina book with photographic images documenting a walk around the greenhouse

A Walk Around the Garden at West Town Farm

Small concertina book with photographic images documenting a walk around the garden