I have been working on ‘Artist Books’ since 1972. In recent years due to wheelchair use, mainly working on paper and designed books. ‘Books without Boundaries’ cover design is registered by the Intellectual Property Office in UK.

ARTIST STATEMENT on BOOKS WITHOUT BOUNDARIES

I conceived the design and the format of my ‘Books without Boundaries’ while working on ‘Geometry without Gravity’, 2002-2010, a unique work on paper in book form.  ‘Geometry without Gravity’ had eventually grown to over one hundred pages of continuous imagery in a scroll, as it were, in book-bound format.  However, the imagery of ‘Books without Boundaries’ not only runs continuously horizontally, as books do, but also vertically over the top and under the bottom of each page.  The book can thus be read in any sequence one may choose in an apparently random, but nevertheless continuous, flow of imagery.  From each page the images transform themselves organically over onto the following one, leading the outlines of the figural or abstract elements to flow and reform themselves into a fresh composition on the next.  Thus the continuous visual narrative can be read in any sequence: forwards, backwards, over the top or under the bottom, ad libitum.

The irregular shape of each book challenged me to devise compositions that mirrored that shape in a consistent but visually adventurous way.  In the process of working on each double page spread, new figurative elements seemed to surface intuitively.  The organisation of these elements revealed new possibilities of reading the book’s narrative, by manipulating the outlines, volumes, textures and colour densities on each fresh page.  Viewers may then bring their own responses to this narrative, depending on the point from which they start, and then the direction with which they proceed, to view the book that they hold in their hands.  Furthermore, reflecting the many ways of reading the book it envelops, each slipcase and book cover are embossed with titles in circular form on both sides, enabling them to be deciphered from whichever angle one may encounter. ©SAQ