Artists' books from the collection
The library has a growing collection of artists’ books, all of which in some way explore sculptural themes.
Items in the collection include hand-made limited editions, conceptual works, book works by land artists and sculptural items exploring the format of the book.
Our collection of artists’ books continues to grow, with new items by contemporary artists added every year.
Chris Drury
Touching 100 Oaks
1991
No. 1 of 3
This book was part of Chris Drury’s ‘Touching One Hundred Oaks’ project for the Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham in 1990.
Drury picked a single leaf from 100 trees in Sherwood Forest and placed each one in an acetate sachet numbered 1 to 100. The leaves are enclosed in a leather-hinged box made out of old footpath signposts.
Tea
By the Way
1999
A concertina format publication which documents a car journey made between Liverpool, Bolton, Wakefield and Hull.
The images were taken at 111 places where the road conditions brought the car to a halt. The commentaries on the reverse were provided by people who live and work at these locations.
Tea are Jon Biddulph, Peter Hatton, Val Murray and Lynn Pilling and the piece was made as part of Artranspennine98, an exhibition of international contemporary visual art.
Kate Bufton
[Book Transformation]
2010
This small sculpture was created by altering an old book through various cuts and folds.
The library hold a number of small sculptural objects, mostly multiples, commissioned by artists in limited editions.
Yoko Terauchi
One
2012
Clonmel, Tipperary: Coracle
Number 18 of edition of 20
This is one of several works in the collection by artist Yoko Terauchi.
The box contains a folded sheet of red paper burned by a heated stainless steel cone to create holes of diminishing dimensions when the sheet is open.
Terauchi was a Henry Moore Foundation Fellow, Artist in Residence at Camberwell School of Art in 1984, and made a site specific installation in Leeds Art Gallery that year.
Mine Searching Yours
2020
London: Forma
During the global lockdown of 2020, Forma invited a group of international artists to ‘start a conversation with a peer and explore what might become of the correspondence’.
The result was a portable exhibition of 7 printed works, published in a limited edition of 500, with the first 300 posted as a mail art project.
The contributing artists are: Julia Crabtree, William Evans, Alice Hattrick, Molly Palmer, Rebecca Jagoe, Himali Singh Soin, Lekha Jandhyala, Gery Georgieva, Kasia Wozniak, Hilary Lloyd, Chris McCormack, Erica Baum, Idra Novey, Erica Scourti and Caspar Heinemann.
Richard Wheater
The Walls we make whilst Dreaming of Escape
2021
Wakefield: Neon Workshops
This publication documents a performance by artist Richard William Wheater, in which he sailed along the Aire and Calder Navigation canal near Wakefield in a small, modified dinghy.
A long- exposure photograph captures the passage of light from the neon mast attached to the boat, erasing the trees and landscape along the canal bank.
The piece was made in homage to American artist Fred Tschida’s 1980 performance crossing Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, USA.
