The Big Picture

2019

‘The Big Picture’ represents a frozen moment in time, a scenario in which every single book is meant to remain forever closed, while at the same time, forever open to new and accidental interpretations. Based on the aftermath of a failed PhD application, the installation is a diagrammatic attempt of replacing knowledge with familiarity by investing the objects in charge of our learning and information with a new type of visual wisdom. In this sense, each book in The Big Picture is redesigned and re-imagined as a purely aesthetical object, a familiar body with imaginative potential that follows strictly the framework and structure assigned by its own purpose.

At the centre of each design cover there are a series of reading ephemera, improvised bookmarks that have been used as a way of separating and secluding the read from the un-read, the past from the future and the meaningful information from just plain text. This represents an ocular way of engaging with and asserting knowledge, one in which information is assessed and quantified in terms of physical weight and visual prowess rather than its theoretical and intellectual content.

The Big Picture was part of EBC023 exhibition, East Bristol Contemporary 2019.