70 Moleskines by international artists, designers, architects,
illustrators, and writers.
4 exhibitions inside 4 London venues: Conran, Waterstones, Stanfords, Artwords.
Central London 9-22 October 2006
Seggestions portraits inventions dreams (CONRAN)
Discoveries tales photography letters (WATERSTONES)
Maps paper atlas sketches (STANFORDS)
Tracks memory details (ARTWORDS)
Waterstones: 203-206 Piccadilly W1
Conran: 81 Fulham Road, SW3
Stanfords: 12-14 Long Acre WC2
Artwords: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 80 Whitechapel High Street
In this city, there are unlimited diversions, spaces, entertainment and cultural possibilities.
The result is a fantastic series of notebooks that we look forward to reading - and writing
ourselves.
Looking at other people's notebooks is a very satisfying and intimate experience. At the
V&A's exhibition of the Leonardo Notebooks we see how the artist used his pocket books
to record observations of the world around him. By contrast, this show presents the
work of many younger London-based artists, and some London writers, with new images
and viewpoints of London - a city with so many different social patterns and unexpected
narratives. A varifocal rather than panoramic view of London emerges, a city seen through
its artists and writers - a city of dreams, realities - and mysteries.
Some notebooks contain stories meticulously presented as if a contemporary cabinet des
dessins. Some are improvised. Some Notebooks are very personal. For example,
Mike Figgis
the film director, filled his book with notes on scaps of paper, old photos, cuts taken from
his films, Xeroxed copies of personal I.D, even a critical and dismissive letter about the
quality of his work.
May Cornet's notebook on display at Artwords is a conceptual piece in
which holes have been carved in the notebook with hairdos drawn around them. The empty
figures almost become a character when you flip the pages.
Maira Kalman presents 7 pairs of shoes as a tale about the difference between the left and
the right one.
Abigail Hunt cuts the waterway of the Thames in the whole lenght of the
concertina style moleskine.
Also on show are Notebooks from designers, architects and writers from around the world.
Moleskines on display include those illustrated by
Todd Kelly, Jason Brooks, Birgit Brenner,
Reg Mombassa, Paul Davis, Ross Lovegrove, Javier Marías, Alessandro Mendini, and
James
Jarvis.
Accompanying the notebooks, there is a video loop in each venue so all the Notebooks can
be viewed at each location.
The Moleskines are displayed in specially designed perspex
boxes allowing visitors to look through them - wearing plastic gloves.
This interaction is irrestistible, and viewers can explore the Notebooks and their contents,
lose themselves, locate unknown places and trace obscure paths in their home town.
