Manual Setting

Eyes tired from new media, projections, backlit technologies and digitised images? Enter the world of raw, fresh, immediate sketchbooks, held in the hand, turned with the fingers. In Manual Setting visitors leaf through sketchbooks together with exhibitors: artists, scientists and writers. This enacts the viewing of a notebook as a hand-held, shared and performative activity. Who is revealed during this process of showing and being shown? An enquiry is made concerning intimacy; and the border between personal and private; as well as the provisionally sketched and the finished. Books can often only be exhibited in cases, boxes or frames one page at a time. Handling the sketchbook/notebook repairs the loss of human contact with these objects. There can be a reconciliation with the manual practice of showing to others, activating lively discussion between maker and audience. In the house/gallery setting, several people who keep notebooks, (or what they consider to be sketchbook material), will be situated around the building. These include Dino Alfier, Eleanor Bowen and Paul Ryan (who co-curated this project with Danielle Arnaud), as well as a changing list of invited guests. Saturday 5th February is —Archaeology Day— with guest exhibitors Simon Callery and Dr Helen Wickstead. See website for guests and themes on other days.