Agastopia: The admiration of any particular part of the body.

Reference note:
Printed clamshell/solander box format, book-ended by two cast aluminium telephones. Images front, texts back.

In keeping with my use of found objects as material for my practice, I have used images of friends, colleagues and others to construct an artist`s book. The back of the book is printed with words related to desire and the front has close-up images of the skin of the various subjects - honing in on sites of interest like scars, moles and blemishes. These become abstracted to the point of non-recognisability. Ambiguity leaves the viewer uncertain as to the body parts being photographed, becoming suggestive rather than purely recognisable.

For the artist`s book Agastopia, I took close-up images of friends and colleagues and others, honing in on sites of interest like scars, moles, blemishes, in short the things that make them particular or individual. By going in close, the details become almost abstracted and anonymous. The closeness also becomes ambiguous where details suggest other perhaps more intimate body parts, but are in fact not at all. The suggestiveness is heightened in the mind of the viewer according to their own proclivities. The aluminium book has texts related to desire, appreciation, longing and lust printed on the back of the images further suggesting possible readings of the images.

Ref: DP/17026

Exhibition notes:
‘Booknesses: Contemporary South African Artist's Books’.

FADA Gallery, University of Johannesburg.

Curated by David Paton and Eugene Hon.

24 March - 5 May 2017

‘Small editions’.

Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts, Johannesburg.

14 October 2021 – 28 January 2022.

Ref: GB/16500