Opening 6th February at LJMU’s Mount Pleasant Campus Library, ‘Where Artists and Texts Meet’ is the latest compilation of book art from around the UK. The exhibition celebrates the diversity of book art, while asking artists to re-explore their relationship with literature; for most, the spark that ignited their love of this artform.
The programme includes talks and events, including a Book Art Insight Day on 19th February, featuring talks and workshops by the artists whose work populates the Where Artists And Texts Meet exhibition, including Barbara Jones, Alice Evans, Gillian Whiteley and Linda Parr.
Barbara Jones, a long-time exhibitor with Liverpool Book Art, is showing a work that had originally been scheduled for a show during COVID, but was seen online. The book itself, a hardback copy of Lloyds Register of Ships, from 1998-99, is pierced with yarn, charting Ferdinand Magellan’s struggle to find passage through South America. The Portuguese explorer’s name now historically tied to the continent, but less is known of the challenges he faced on his journey.
The book, edited and adapted by Barbara Jones presents, as clearly as is possible, the relationship between art and narrative storytelling. Each string binds one part of the journey to the next, through reems of paper; wrapped around the book’s binding, and puncturing the journey’s most significant points. It feels laboured and definite. Minimal text is added, so the story is told entirely visually.
There are thirty artists in the exhibition, each challenging notion of book art more than the last. I’ll not dive into detail about every work here, because I don’t have space, but it is worth noting that the exhibiting group’s new home at LJMU is offering them more than just space.
For some of these artists, particularly those whose work focusses on Ferdinand Magellan, their work was almost not seen. So LJMU’s library is an opportunity to finally exhibit that. For others, they’ve applied via a new open call, so the theme is in the title, more than the work.
What LJMU’s library gives though, is a freedom that Liverpool Book Art rarely gets; to play with the building, and the library space. To use quiet spaces and conference rooms. To explore the bright entrances. It’s equally beneficially for the space, entering a more public world of exhibition, and hopefully one that keeps active as it’s a beautiful space to exhibit, and one that I hope other artist groups make use of.
Until 29th March, the exhibition is free and open to the public during the library’s opening hours. It will, undoubtedly be engaged with through the student cohort, but it’s a beautiful invitation into this semi-public space for the rest of us.
Where Artists and Texts Meet is open at Liverpool John Moores University’s Mount Pleasant Campus Library until 29th March 2026
Book tickets for the Book Art Insight Day at www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-arts-insight-day-tickets-1980177522274?
Words, Patrick Kirk-Smith
