MA Creative Practice
As a way of introducing myself, what I've been doing, and what I mean to do, I write below my Personal Statement. This was written and submitted for the application of the MA course, allowing me to reflect and set clear intentions for my creative practice.
The complex relationship between the reader and the book, and its fluctuating past and present struggle, is something that is at the forefront of my creative practice. My background in graphic design, fine art, book-making and print-making allows me a unique perspective on the alteration of this relationship through design.
My interest in this is born from a thread of research I undertook during my degree, in which I studied the transformation of publications into digital form, and how that impacted the market for books, whether they would survive the digitisation of our times and what this means for the designer. My research found that printed books are mostly favoured over digital due to the tactile experience and the feeling of ownership they provide. This then led me to question how the book, and therefore the experience the reader has when reading, can be altered.
I was particularly interested in Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, which claims that the presence of aura in objects made by hand could never be reproduced by mechanical means. Having recently worked in the printing and book-making industry, I experienced firsthand the diminishing care for the creation of books. The increase in mechanisation was praised by the business owner due to increased production speeds, but at the cost of the physicality of the books, and the workers’ job satisfaction and security. What left the factory lacked any sort of aura or uniqueness: they were much like any other mechanically produced item. What was most unfortunate was the denied opportunities to satisfy the niche market for hand-made books due to the desire for production speed.
Alongside this experience, I have also noticed the increase of throw-away culture and how this has altered our attitude to material objects. This is evidenced by observing the history of bookplates. In Martin Hopkinson’s book, Ex Libris: The Art of Bookplates, he discusses their role and place in society throughout the years, and their decline in their use and creation. This decline aligns with the diminishing significance of book ownership as mass printing grows.
This, to me, is a direct reflection of the fast-paced society we live in and the attitude we have towards objects, and has led me to a series of questions I wish to investigate through this MA. I wish to explore what books can be beyond the factory-produced framework; how we can alter the reading experience by objecting to and experimenting with the parameters of the book’s form. I intend to challenge our expectations of books and reveal how we value them in society today.
Through practice-based research, I will explore these themes in a series of projects that involve book-binding and print-making techniques, for which the facilities at Leeds Arts University will be essential. To ensure an in-depth understanding, I will invite collaboration with other artists and host workshops with the general public. I hope to present the conceptual cohort of work produced, bringing to light this thought-provoking subject.