Library Interventions

Leeds College of Art Library

Library Interventions is a new series of events, workshops, exhibitions and publications developed by Leeds College of Art Library. We are collaborating with artists, writers and academics to inspire and encourage students as they explore the relationships between creative practice and theoretical research.

How do we help developing artists to exploit the wealth of resources available to them in their library and bridge the gap so that library users can fully engage with the creative potential of this rich body of art and knowledge?

It should be noted that Leeds College of Art’s library has consistently scored over ninety per cent in the Student Satisfaction Survey. Many people therefore already know how excellent this provision is. How can we bridge the gap so that our students more readily engage with the creative potential of this rich body of art and knowledge?

Garry Barker demonstrated by his Intervention that inspiration, the how and where of meeting with art, directly feeds life and career choices.

We are thrilled to discover many more artists who are willing to share their inspiration and can now confirm future Interventions in this exciting series will be:

03.02.14 – 28.03.14: Sharon Kivland is an artist and writer based in England and France. She is Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University and a Research Associate of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, London.  She describes her practice as “one of stupid refinement, trapped in archives, libraries, the arcades, and the intersection of public political action and private subjectivity”. Sharon will be sending agents out on her behalf, cascading research into the curiosity of her elective doppelgangers. The result? An unfolding mystery shall be caught in a series of reports and gathered in a publication launched at the Library Intervention’s conclusion. This work shall be linking up with a presence at the Leeds International Artist Book Fair.

03.03.14 – 04.04.14: Pavel Büchler winner of the 2010 Northern Art Prize, is an artist, teacher and occasional writer who describes his practice as “making nothing happen”. His Library Intervention is Red and Black,  a conceptual piece wherein the library staff are under instruction. He intends the piece to be discovered, to be a surprise reconfiguration of our normal browsing and methods of looking.

01.04.14 – 30.05.14: Nick Thurston is the author of three books plus numerous journal articles and artists’ pages; and co-author of two pocketbooks. His print and sculptural works are held in public and private collections around Europe. He is co-editor of the independent artists’ book publishing imprint information as material (York). He intends to reproduce an image of silence, the vowels and consonants of a mouth frozen in language yet then re-produced as an available resource in the library. The white staples of this chap book are as if teeth, the unheard language is wordless and yet speaks.

01.04.14 – 30.05.14: Graham Head will immerse language based visual work in actual language via The TEXT cupboard within the house of IMAGE, a series of library based consultations- dialogues- events centred around Visual Art’s relationships with the Word. Ranging from Adolf Wolfi to Bruce Nauman via illuminated manuscripts and, especially, James Joyce.

05.05.14 – 30.05.14 & 03.11.14 – 28.11.14: Kate Briggs  is the translator of two volumes of Roland Barthes’s late lectures at the Collège de France (Columbia University Press, 2010 and 2013) and the author of Exercise in Pathetic Criticism (information as material, 2011) along with a forthcoming series of reading works. She taught a Summer School for Literary Perverts at The Whitechapel Gallery.  Her Library Intervention at LCA is:  And This Is What We Call By the Book’s Name.  The artist will collaborate with the users of Leeds College of Art Library to find out what their various experiences of reading the books in its collection have left behind. Or, in other words, to find out how the library’s books exist for its users once they are no longer actively being read.

All Interventions are open to Leeds College of Art students.

Members of the public are also welcome. Please call 0113 2028000 for library opening times and further information.

Leeds College of Art

Library Interventions

Tags: Art, Art Education, Artists' Books, Libraries, Reading, Research