Monday, August 13, 2012

"Book" artist's work appeals to The Bookman

Recently while reading the catalogue featuring Elam Graduate Work 2011  I  was greatly taken by the art of Katrina van Roon. I contacted Katrina and subsequently bought a piece of her art. Some examples appear below, I think you will understand why it appealed to me. 

Katrina (photo right- credit 'Jocelen Janon - www.jocelenjanon.com')
was born and raised in Auckland, NZ in an academically inclined and creatively supportive family. She has just completed her Bachelors of Fine Arts Honours year at Elam School of Fine Arts, and is currently completing the arts side of her conjoint degree with a major in Media Studies and unofficial minor in English. She hopes to enter into a creative field next year, job willing, perhaps in publishing, photography, or film/television/theatre production design.
 She welcomes feedback and interest, and is contactable at K.v.Roon@gmail.com


Here is her artist statement:

I am a reader, in particular, a lover of narrative. Though primarily a bibliophile, I love stories told in any medium, and, as a result narrative has, and probably always will have a profound effect on me and my practice. Currently an important aspect of my practise is the exploration of text as a visual language, leading to an examination of its mediums construction and material qualities. In our current climate we are so overwhelmed by information that the intricacies of its delivery are commonly forgotten, a pity as the medium is in control of the text; words and images are only ever representations, symbols,  and appropriations of reality.
The death of the physical book object has long been predicted but until recently it has not been a true possibility. The information maelstrom we now find ourselves in forces the evaluation of language systems, both pictorial and written, and our relationship to them. As a result of this I believe we must evaluate what is individual to each medium of reading - that can’t be easily reproduced by any other.  Digital texts have the opportunity to be highly interactive and easily manipulated by the reader, while hard copy texts are tangible physical objects that the reader can hold, touch and observe the details in the ink and paper, greatly effecting the experience of reading them. I believe that the book-object’s greatest asset is its physicality, we cannot touch a digital text, feel its weight and texture and its smell. Digital texts have a weightlessness, unbound as they are to an tangible form; their lack of physical presence has meant that the book form still persists and I think it will continue to do so, for its sensory experience. The book object spends the mass of its life as a souvenir of the reading experience, a trigger to a reality that only ever existed in our imaginations; an emotional surrogate for unreachable or unknown desires, that can displace us from our normal lives for a short period.  
This project started two years ago (and has now expanded into many different mediums) through an exploration of book marking or rather dog earing the corners of book pages, and how this alters and expands the physicality of the book object. The very action of book marking is an interesting one, it pauses the narrative, marking a point in time for a later return. The crucial role of time in narrative drew me to Giles Deleuze’s theory of ‘the fold.’  The theory of an origami cosmos, where two points of time can be folded together to meet; an appropriate theory to consider dog earing through. In this project I have attempted to expand the condensed physicality of the book; through patterns of repedative folds, to manipulate the narratives internal time; in a manner that, with no additions, adhesives, or irreversable changes, attempts to respect the materiallity of the book form and the experience of reading it. 
Katrina van Roon
8th  of August,  2012




No comments: