Books
This was a small collection of 'artist's books' I made whilst studying at Sheffield Hallam University's Fine Art department as a part-time student.
I had recently published a book in my 'other life' as an academic researcher at UMIST's School of Management (click here to see it). One of my responses to this event was to take a copy of the book and cover each page in a mix of wet peat.
Other parts of the Books project consisted in burying a set of books in a peat bog in the Peak District and recovering them six months later and creating a series of tiny books made out of hand-made paper to be preserved in a jar of olive oil.
I still have the books in olive oil. The others disappeared a long time ago.
The drypoint print was made at the same time. I had nine pieces of aluminium on which I had scored a grid. On a walk along Stanage Edge in the Peak District I would stop at certain predetermined intervals and smash the plates into the earth's surface with a lump hammer. It was sort of Richard Long meets Sol Le Witt and the Boyle Family.
