Like love: part 1, part 2, part 3

A series of exhibitions held at Spike Island, Bristol, Bluecoat, Liverpool, and The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, in 2009 - 2010, Like Love in its widest sense explores universal ideas around the concept of care and community cohesion – the emotion we invest in others and in the making of works of art. Taking as its inspiration Roland Barthes’, A Lover’s Discourse, Boyce uses the combination of labour intensive and utilitarian processes to underscore the testimony, adamant posturing, ambivalence, longing and sometimes-tenuous nature of relationships. Like Love is commissioned by Spike Island and is an Arts Council England National Touring Exhibition in partnership with the Bluecoat and The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery.

The book 'Like Love', published by The Green Box, Berlin, 2010, 74 pages, brings together elements from Sonia Boyce's exhibitions Like Love - Part One, Two and Three, with extracts from behind-the-scenes conversations and processes and the literary sources that in part inspired Sonia Boyce, most notably Roland Barthes' 'A Lovers Discourse', which deconstructs the concept of love from the various viewpoints of its many bearers and sufferers. The structure of this artist book both reflects the fragmentary nature of Barthes' narrative, as well as the multiple perspectives of Boyce's collaborators, who worked with her to explore ideas around care, an emotion embodied in a steady, deep and enduring commitment to people and things; an emotion that is like love.