BOOKEND- Nick Cash + Matt Hale

 

BOOKEND is an installation of books treated as objects and experimented on. These actions are shown on video screens implanted in books. A book floats down a river, another is sawn in half. Others are baked, buried, placed in acid, exploded, flown and have their pages blown by the wind. In the background a library is demolished. These events are presented on rescued university library shelving.

 

“These works of art by Nick Cash and Matt Hale all have physical books as their origin, many of which have been deaccessioned from public libraries…The books have been profoundly changed and altered, in a way that would seem to breach the usual terms and conditions of a loan made by a library…the works in this exhibition are, in some respects, works of agony, in which are expressed ideas of almost transcendent suffering, they are also formally exact and satisfying in their approach to ideas of soiled spiritual beauty”  

 

Extracted quote from an accompanying text by Neal Brown 2016