Book-Object-Art

'Book-Object-Art' is an ongoing project consisting of more than 120 book-assemblages that Cleaver begun in 2010. The selection included in this submission gathers eighteen works that were produced and disseminated between 2014 and 2019. Cleaver’s research process aims to transform existing books into sculptural objects. He integrates the techniques of collage and assemblage, retaining the modernist idea of a surface or volume’s effacement and reconstruction in absence (Greenberg 1961, 80). Making use of his personal extensive collection of books, ephemera, pop-culture memorabilia and drawings, he presents a deconstruction of authority (political, religious), including the authority of books themselves. The process is driven by a page folding technique that follows each time a slight misalignment pattern with the page grid. This renders the book largely unreadable as the text is replaced with its painterly representation resulting from its destruction. Nevertheless, ‘meaning’ remains possible and is communicated through the addition of figurative elements; for example, empty inside book covers become a blank canvas for collage, often accompanied by recurring figurines of political and religious leaders (Hitler, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Christ). What is achieved in each instance are three-dimensional sculptural installations. But no work resembles another because the final form is determined by the different material properties of juxtaposed elements. From a semiotic perspective, they articulate what Rosalind Krauss describes as a ‘meta-language of the visual’ (1981, 19): sculptural meta-narratives that organise a discourse about the fate of objects in different cultures and societies. These works have been disseminated in art galleries (Ketchum; G511ERY; Gallery 8, London; Peninsula Arts Gallery, Plymouth; Muzium & Galeri Tuanku Fauziah, Penang, Malaysia) and bookstores (Waterstones, Manchester). A catalogue of works produced to date was published by Cleaver in 2019, with text in the English and Chinese Mandarin.

A multi-component output that includes:
(1) Cleaver, Phil (2014) Book-Object-Art (2014 - 2020). [Artefact]
(2) Cleaver, Phil (2019) Book-Object-Art. [Exhibition Catalogue]