A Human Approach

240 x 120 mm

Concertina book made up of 22 panels.

Red cover boards. Handmade paper. Colour tissue paper to bind each panel.

Typewritten text.

This bookwork began as loose pages of cut-up and collaged text from William Freeman’s novel, The Human Approach To Literature (a book I found last year). Each page was then written through to create the text that now exists in this concertina format. The coloured paper binding draws upon the theme of binding prevalent throughout Freeman's text.

The concertina has no front or back cover. Opening it at one end shows how each poem builds on the one before. Opening it at the other end presents three poems made up entirely of five key words and phrases that appear in each panel. At this point I was looking at Wolfgang Iser and dabbling in theories of reader-response. Particularly Iser's idea that the reader sees these words in a different perspective and is able to recognise the pattern that is being created but also, acknowledge the differences due to the varied contexts the words are used in (The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach).

In the first version of this bookwork I set out to use visual elements to completely change the form of Freeman’s novel and reconfigure the content. However, it lacked unity and compactness which I think version two shows a bit better in relation to both form and content.