The Anti-Library

I went to SPACE Studios yesterdays and saw a show that made me laugh a lot. It was a project that I was asked to take part in - an Anti-Library. The starting point was this quote by essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb: "... a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones..."

On the specially created shelving space are book (not read by artists and writers including Jamie Shovlin, Aleksandra Domanovic, Tom Morton, Oliver Laric, Cally Spooner, Tom Ellis, Mark Essen, Yuri Pattison and many others. Each book had the name of the donor inserted accompanied by a text explaining why it had been donated in the giver's own works. Some of them were bloody hilarious and it was a very interesting insight into everyone's bookshelves (who doesnt like rummaging around bookshelves??)

Particularly entertaining choices included Harry Burden donated tome on castration, Dave Hoyland of Seventeen Gallery's self help book on friends of alcoholics and Julie Verhoeven's copy of Erica Jong's Fear of Flying with the cover ripped off. My personal choice was a dusty 60s copy of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (ug so dull, that whole rich teen girl depression thing. As I wrote when I was younger I wanted to be Anais Nin not Plath).

The show is open under Dec 17 and I really recommend having a rummage.