It is not an endless series, this divorce series, but it certainly did feel like it as I did it. I have delayed photographing them for more than 3 months, just to be quit of the series!
Altered cover from a book called, aptly, How We Decide, which was on my business book shelf for years. I had bought it because I loved Jonah Lehrer’s blog posts, and i never actually read it. The red worked really well for the collage portrait this was pulled from originally (although there are only tiny bits of the portrait actually in the work, in fact, is that significant? The only bits of red in the piece are the struts that hold together the binding of the book.
The binding is a stitch-free binding someone taught me at a Glenn Skein workshop years ago. I am not great with high detail stuff, it doesn’t make me happy to do it, so I’m a big fan of this one.
The pages are old sheet music that Nicola put through her press for me a few months ago.
Added to the pages are another old salvaged collage work of what are now antique postcards mostly from Avant Card. Avant card were free postcards promoting shows and films and businesses, and you used to be able to pick them up at the theatre or cafes. I had a massive collection and in 2003 or so I cut them up – they were already old – and made some works which I have named inside the books cover. They are pasted/glued into the pages. it doesn’t quite work because the pages of the book are flimsier than the card collaged to card, so heavy, but i like the image – divorce for me has not been easy, and continues to not be, 12 years later. I carry with me all of the baggage from even before we married, and the baggage acquired during the time of being married (not all FROM the marriage).
My original conception for this book was to piggy back it on the larger peachy-coloured Fashion/Divorce book, which I’m yet to photograph – i wanted it to feel a little awkward. Art mirroring life, i guess. So far I haven’t attached it, and that doesn’t mean I won’t when I find what i’ve done with it!!
there’s a full list of everything included in the book inside the book’s front cover, and you can see an image of it below.
