Personal Phrases
2024
These short prose pieces reflect on personal phrases; the unique phrases we devise and repeat to those close to us, exploring their relationality, rhythm, currency, and the affects of their repetition and quotation.
Second edition of 40. Unbound short stories. 210x148mm. Construction: colour printed unbound short stories on 135gsm vellum white paper, 175gsm rust cover card, hand embossed sheath.
PORTALS: Short stories
2023
Through a neighbour’s window, an oscillating door, a discarded souvenir, and an escapist’s hunch, Portals is a selection of four unbound short stories that explore the irreversibility of revelation, and a parting with the past at a threshold.
Book: 8 short stories sealed individually in envelopes, filed in a pale pink and dark green concertina folder.
Dimensions: 115(H) x 85(W) x 30(D)mm. Edition of 10.
Sponge
2022
Sponge is a collection of short stories which draw on the minutiae of the kitchen. A sponge soaks up liquid whilst holding its composure, speaking to both surplus and attunement. Underneath the tight adjective of each title, details such as the end of a ketchup bottle or the stringy bits on a banana are enlarged into scenes that are saturated with sentiment.
Double-sided print in fluoro green and metallic silver on 250gsm, 210 x 148mm. Edition of 300.
her decisive conclusion
2022
Graphic design by Charlie Abbott at work-form, London.
Made for the ‘Ai Mi Tagai London/Tokyo 2022’ group exhibition, at White Conduit Projects, London.
Handmade concertina book: 22 pages, 120x103mm. Limited edition of 30.
Construction: Inkjet print and eight hand-printed lino cuts, 2mm board, 175gsm paper, 135gsm plain and granular embossed paper, 116gsm linen embossed paper
New sheets (publication)
2021
The narrator’s optimistic mood after changing the bedding is trailed by a series of resolute thuds; setting down a vase, a wheelie bin lid closing, and debris falling from a gaping hole in the ceiling. Their attempt to restore the orderliness of the room is negated as the room and mood deteriorate. Point-of-view is rattled through glimpses and glances, digressions and a heightened self-awareness. Recurring resolute thuds suspend any sense of finality and resolution.
New sheets (publication) is the companion work of New sheets (AV).
Booklet, 12 pages, 130mm x 100mm. Limited edition of 40.
Construction: laser printed on 125gsm book paper and 120gsm metallic silver paper, stab binding in deep red
Cracking up
2021
Cracking up toys with the diverging meaning of its title; a phrase that suggests both cracking up in laughter and breaking into pieces. Through the narrative of two characters throwing eggs down a hill and running to retrieve them, bodily paroxysms of emotion, inertia, ceremony, and ritual are scrambled together, rousing the ecstasy shared by both passion and grief.
Companion work to the moving image work, Cracking up.
Pamphlet, 3 pages, 183x283mm, (closed: 183x77mm). Limited edition of 35.
Construction: laser print on 120gsm paper, 85x85mm hand printed lino cut, laser cut holes, hand embossed circles, hand-drawn perforation detail.
The Sudden Cheese
2021
A temporary hoarding is erected in the narrator’s local area. Over the duration of the text, the narrator’s opinion of this surprise structure deviates in accordance with their own internal logic, their aesthetic tastes, and through their need for a more liveable kind of ambivalence to their changing circumstances.
Collaborative publication, printed by Gelatinprint, Glasgow. 18 x 13cm, handbound. First edition of 20 copies.
a holding place
2021
Lydia Davies and Jess Holdengarde
a holding place is the first edition of 20 handbound artist books made by Lydia Davies and Jess Holdengarde. In response to Holdengarde’s work Intangible Matter, this collaboration employs fiction and correspondence to create a re-telling of an intangible object; the story of a dead bird found in the ashes of a fireplace which has to be left behind, and the periphery that frames the scene. a holding place is a refuge for a story lived and lost over and over. Exploring loss and grief, this work grasps at something that needs to be let go. As it is retold, the narrative morphs as some details slip away and new details come to the fore.
Double-sided risograph print on 140gsm paper, 129mm x 177mm (open)
Booklet
2019
Double-sided inkjet print on 40gsm paper, 297mm x 420mm (open)
an either or, a neither nor
2016
