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GEM DUCK
Photocopies & hand drawing centered around shoes & shoe parts.
Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
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April 10, 2008
"GEM DUCK - a heavy duck fabric cemented to insoles to support and strengthen the insole lip." I've already commented on Knowles elsewhere in these reviews. She makes work centered around things that probably very few other people have much of an interest in - distinctly unsensational material - &, yet. here's an Italian bi-lingual edition of collages of decayed photocopies of shoes & shoe parts + shoe-relevant text such as "a letter from Geoff Hendricks containing a dream of shoes". This wd've been a fairly early use of the decay possibilities of multiple generation photocopies [not as early as Ian Burn's ""Xerox" Book, 1968, that explores that aspect specifically] & the work's general grayness reflects this.
Knowles wrote: "Getting this together was like sorting stones and putting them into dishes underwater." That description alone is endearing & expressive of what I presume to be the general attitude behind the work: accumulate material that appeals to you personally & organize it intuitively & aesthetically. For me? It doesn't do anything except maybe make me imagine doing the same sort of thing for myself - imagining the underwater rocks is appealing - but more as a way to spend a casual spontaneous summer afternoon w/ a friend than something worth killing trees for to make a bk out of. But I can appreciate Knowles' sense of priorities being completely different from my own & like her just for that.
Knowles wrote: "Getting this together was like sorting stones and putting them into dishes underwater." That description alone is endearing & expressive of what I presume to be the general attitude behind the work: accumulate material that appeals to you personally & organize it intuitively & aesthetically. For me? It doesn't do anything except maybe make me imagine doing the same sort of thing for myself - imagining the underwater rocks is appealing - but more as a way to spend a casual spontaneous summer afternoon w/ a friend than something worth killing trees for to make a bk out of. But I can appreciate Knowles' sense of priorities being completely different from my own & like her just for that.
Displaying 1 of 1 review