Register Series
Installation: Bookworks, Rowe Gallery, UNC-Charlotte, NC, USA. 2010
Photo credit: Crista Cammaroto
The Register Series continues a long investigation into themes of memory, loss and transformation explored through matter (porcelain and books in this series), using fire as an agent of change. A set of directories, the Thomas Register of American Manufacturers (a multi-volume catalogue of the manufacturer’s material world), have been reconstituted, fossilized and transformed into new states through different experimental processes. Books, rapidly being superseded by developing digital technologies, are here relegated to the status of matter. Working through the 13 volumes of the set, I am dealing with the materiality of books, but also making reference to: their power as objects, sacred and secular; ancient texts; obsolete paper-based office practices and as a memorial or elegy to the non-virtual world.