Arnolfini Bookshop is delighted to host book artist Sarah Bodman for an experiment in automatic drawing.
On Thursday 14th November 2019, an experiment will take place at Arnolfini Bookshop. In tribute to the Fox Sisters and the artist Susan Hiller’s Sisters of Menon publication, you are invited to join in and attempt to capture a reading that Artist Sarah Bodman will transmit to you. A4 paper and pens will be provided to create automatic drawings of her transmitted image. The results will be displayed in the exhibition Read With Me, at UWE Bower Ashton Library throughout December 2019.
Please note that Sarah will transmit the reading at 18:30.
Sarah Bodman’s artist’s book Read To Me is the result of an experiment made in collaboration with a psychometric reader. It was an attempt to transmit the emotional content of stories through a series of physical objects. The artist selected ten objects to read chapters of novels, or short texts to. The objects were then posted to the reader who relayed their stories back to the artist. The project began by accident in winter 2002 at Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY, USA, when Sarah undertook an Artist’s Publishing Residency to produce a limited edition artist’s book The Marsh Test. It was here that someone mentioned the Fox Sisters, Margaret and Kate who launched their careers (aged 16 and 13) as spirit mediums (170 years ago) with a public performance on 14th November 1849, at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, NY. Their performances played a part in the huge rise of interest in spirit rappings and in turn the founding of the Spiritualist Movement in 1850s America.
