untitled, hand-bound book, 1 of 9, 2010

A trend for the work-of-art as an illustration of a theoretical text has become increasingly more popular; if theory, or philosophy was the inspiration for the art work could the text itself be the artwork? This question raised another - what would the value of such an object be? and furthermore how could it be presented? 

By simply re-contextualising the theoretical/philosophical texts i.e. placing them in the gallery, the book would take on the status of an object rather than communicating its content. A process of editing and re-combining texts from various sources divorced the text - or the idea - from the object (the identifiable tropes of 'book' being an identifiable author, a title, a cover and a structure that follows the beginning-middle-end template) creating a more flexible, or animated structure for a 'book'.

In relation to the question of value, these 'books' question the authority of the original, and ask the question -at what point do the objects that I have created from these texts become far enough removed from the original to become an original themselves?