Book Art at the Library

A couple of days ago, I stumbled across an interesting exhibition at Bath Central Library. For the second time the Library is holding its annual Recycle an Ex-Library Book Competition. Participating members of Bath and North East Somerset Libraries  were given an ex-library book, which was ear-marked for recycling, and tasked with turning the unwanted book into a work of art.

The entries are currently being displayed at the Central Library until 24th September. Visitors to the exhibition are encouraged to vote for their favourite piece from each category: under 12s, 12-17 years olds, over 18s and group entry. It was quite a challenge to pick my favourite as I didn't know whether to focus on the best piece as regards paper-crafting skill or original concept.

Maybe some book lovers shudder at the thought of cutting, pasting and excising book pages, but the books in the exhibition are books which did not sell at library book-sales and whose ultimate end would have been the pulping machine. A piece of art, whether created by a child at school or by a professional artist is usually treasured and, to me, it seems a fitting new life for a book which would otherwise be discarded.

What do you think about creating works of art from unused books?

The Never Ending Book

Take away a book from the art gallery

I visited Tate St Ives art gallery last weekend and had the pleasure of viewing and interacting with The Never Ending Book 2007 an installation by American conceptual artist Allen Ruppersberg. 

This work consists of brightly coloured boxes, benches and tables which have cardboard boxes placed on them. Each box is filled with A4 photocopies of pages of books from Ruppersberg's personal library and visitors are encouraged to sift through and collect six sheets to take home as their own 'book'. As I was visiting the gallery with someone else (who is not as interested in collecting random pieces of paper as I am), I was lucky enough to take home 12 sheets.

At home, I cut down some of the sheets to postcard size, found some coloured paper to form the cover and bound my chosen sheets into a commemorative book.

I found another review here about a visit to The Never Ending Book and they also bound their collected sheets into a book. However, I noticed that the number of sheets they were allowed to collect was different when they visited back in June. 

I wonder what other visitors do with their chosen sheets apart from binding them into books?