a Book of Longing

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About this project

A Book of Longing is my newest erotic work, which is characterized by explicitness, introspection and revelation. An eight-page (recto and verso), screenprinted, hand-bound artist’s book, it explores the complicated knot of emotional longing and sexual desire.

A Book of Longing conjures up memories and fantasies; it represents tokens of affection and objects of yearning; it evokes interaction with the lover, the self and the lover-in-one’s-self. Personal effects, sexual joinings, clasped hands, candy hearts, gestural portraits and a poetic text, appear in succession and combination as the pages of the bookwork are unfolded, inviting the viewer to consider different layers of experience and understanding. A subtle and evocative rhythm is created through the use of images in series and a loosely narrative format.

In my ongoing concern with the representation of subjective experience, I employ aspects of self-portraiture, performance, photography, and popular erotic imagery. A Book of Longing continues my development of visual languages and texts portraying erotic experience, extending into emotional states of being. It reveals my ongoing interest in the relationship of experience to popular imagery, including media representation of sexual experiences, and includes in this work commercial imagery of emotional expression.

Feminist discourses and queer approaches to the production and reception of erotic material are important influences and provide the theoretical context for this work. The representation of personal revelation is investigated through project format and bookwork design. The size and shape of the book, the labour of its printing process, and the manipulation of pages to reveal pictures and text, provide an intimacy of experience for the viewer.

Exhibition history:

2012     a Book of Longing, Fleishman Gallery, Toronto