The UAL Art Collection’s original intentions were very different to what they are now. Originally created as a house for ‘art for offices’, i.e. work that had been collected for enjoyment by the University’s Rectors, Heads of Schools and so on, during the mid-to-late 1980’s. Those early acquisitions were predominately small, wall-based prints or paintings, essentially suitable for those workplace environments.
While we continue to collect fantastic 2D pieces of course, we’re very pleased that over the years we have been able to widen the scope of the collection to include a wide range of media, from large-scale sculpture to intricate textiles, complex multi-media installations to born-digital work including web-based and VR.
The desire, requirement and opportunity to broaden our scope and better reflect the UAL graduates’ vast creative output has been furthered by the collection’s move to the Archives and Special Collections centre in 2019. Our resources have evolved, as have our display capabilities, and our potential for use by researchers and students has increased vastly.
With these positive changes in mind we have been building on our representation of artists’ books and book arts within the collection. Books have been created by fine artists, designers, documentary photographers, and makers working in many other disciplines within the university, and of course notably by students of the former MA Book Arts at Camberwell College of Arts.
The medium of the book can serve to convey a complex research project, or can be a powerfully poetic object in itself. With this blog post I will introduce some of the diverse book arts we have acquired over recent years.
Amy Henry: RESONANT BODIES: Echoes of Collateral Damage from the U.S. Drone Program, 2021
Henry studied MA Graphic Media Design at London College of Communication. This is a gatefold publication with two separate books folding outwards, so visible simultaneously. In Henry’s (2022) words, the project it contains ‘addresses the interplay between the acoustic vibrations produced by the United States’ military drone program and the trauma sustained by people on the ground who are subjected to chronic drone sonics on a prolonged basis. It investigates the weaponisation of sound in relation to psychological injury triggered from sound produced by drones or UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), accompanied by explorations into resonance as a method of design’.
Henry’s piece encapsulates a vast, multifaceted research project and uses the unusual format of her publication to place opposing vantages (those of the US military in the air and civilians on the ground) opposite and next to one another: we see two perspectives concurrently and thus we are reminded how different their stakes are.
Kehkashan Khalid: The Untold Edition - A Visual Journey, 2019
Khalid studied MA Fine Art Digital at Camberwell College of Arts. Her work explores the positive potential of public art in a post-truth world. She sites her work in ‘an era of digimodernism where there is an atomization of individuals, constant dialogue and reformulation of art’. In this environment she states belief in leveraging our influence and using platforms such as social media for humanitarian efforts.
Her public art projects in Karachi and Jeddah ‘aim to empower underprivileged or abused women and children, narrate untold or forgotten stories, and cause creative transformation in the communities that need it’ (Khalid, 2019). Her work transcends definition in a single media, incorporating video, sculpture, installation and the artist’s journal which not just captures her work in progress, her thoughts and her emotions, but becomes an art object in its own right.
Amelia D H Tovey, Folktale for the Future: Flood Story, 2020
Tovey studied BA Graphic Communication Design at CSM. She asks the question ‘what stories will future generations be telling about us in the context of climate crisis?’, and through this hand-bound book combines an international selection of folktales to create a new narrative prop that exists within what Tovey defines as a ‘SolarPunk’ future, in which the climate crisis is resolved from collective action. She purposefully designed the book to be so large and heavy that one person alone struggles to read it, as she says, ‘requiring a community of readers, as humanitarian and environmental issues rely on collective action’.
Tovey’s work demonstrates fully-invested thinking, whereby the subject matter and the processes and materials involved in its production are symbiotic. She uses recycled materials and natural dyes, exploring environmentally conscious methods of image-making that she hopes will be taken forward into future design practice (Tovey, 2021).
Joan Higgins: Wool and Words, 2019
Higgins studied MA Book Arts at Camberwell College of Arts, which closed in 2020. Her work explores contrasts and contradictions in the Yorkshire woollen industry and speak to the poetry of form in book arts, and the versatility of the medium.
Higgins says of her work, ‘Images and impressions reflect the geography of the industry and sharp contrasts between the purity of the wool and the filth and dirt of the production process. Fine stitching and darning with rust dye and black ink. Jobs and homes for workers but industrial diseases and urban decline. Young men fighting and dying in foreign wars wearing fine scarlet uniforms, made of Yorkshire cloth. Harsh Pennine landscape, soft water. Prosperity for the few, poverty for others. Beautiful wool, smoke, pollution, foul smells. All part of the mix’ (Higgins 2019).
A folder of images and information on these works, alongside all other book arts in the UAL Art Collection, can be found on the online catalogue.
These works are also available to view in person by booking a research visit to the Archives and Special Collections Centre. For more information please contact archive-enquiries@arts.ac.uk