Overbooked

A wall of books erupts from Drawing Room's gallery library and becomes subsumed by the floor, as pages become airborne. "Overbooked" simultaneously raises the issues of storage, history, and retention of information, while referencing the tactile and evocative nature of books. This installation is born out of a personal dilemma: after decades of collecting, and even worshipping books, I now have to get rid of them, and I’m pondering what that means. The amount they contain overwhelms me. As I go though them, I can trace my arc of making from a very young age. Like making, books represent the ability to transform or be transformed. They have always been a tactile container for potential, ambition, investigation. When these books are gone, I will be left to depend on the jumbled memories that choose to come forward without their prompting. I won’t have the comfort of a visible record of time well spent. Without their physical presence, my experience of time passing becomes flattened.