To a Certain Gentleman (2018)
hard bound book with hand painted marbling paper, 13 x 18cm, edition of 10
Commissioned by the Portico Library, Manchester
hard bound book with hand painted marbling paper, 13 x 18cm, edition of 10
Commissioned by the Portico Library, Manchester
To a Certain Gentleman is a book composed of found fragments of historic texts sourced within the collection at the Portico Library in Manchester, a Georgian-period subscription library. All of the texts that comprise the work were taken from prefaces, introductions and apologias (a literary device used as a pre-emptive defence for the author’s position, often found in the form of a preface), and were written by male authors; mostly ‘by and for the English gentleman’ of the Victorian age.
Re-working and presenting back the collection as a discourse around language and power, literary convention, gender and self-expression, To a Certain Gentleman reads as a monologue of pomposity, vulnerability and self preservation. The book functions as a single self-indulgent preface, referring continually to a text that never arrives.
Read a digital version of the book here.
Re-working and presenting back the collection as a discourse around language and power, literary convention, gender and self-expression, To a Certain Gentleman reads as a monologue of pomposity, vulnerability and self preservation. The book functions as a single self-indulgent preface, referring continually to a text that never arrives.
Read a digital version of the book here.
