by hand and eye

solo exhibition of artist-made books at Sutton Project Space (2010)

The exhibition explores what relationships could be found or forged between the body and the book and combines the two discrete forms of contemporary dance and the artist's book with the resulting acts of translation that ensued between them.

Walton is a key practitioner in debates now current about dance as a gestural and mark making practice, and has given a number of performed lectures around this topic: Between Text and Space for Writing Encounters at York St John University, York, UK (2008), Dancing the book: dust detritus remains, for the Faculty of Fine Arts Forum, Monash University (2008), and Dancing the Book: a detournment at the National Art Library (NAL) of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2007). Claire MacDonald
 
by hand and eye is an ongoing project that explores potential relations between body and book, dance and writing, action and the mark. It combines performance and inscriptive gestures, exploring a practice at the edge of the ephemeral and the material that addresses ideas about scores, scripts and documents of and by the body. It asks – how then to make the temporal permanent – inscribe it in marks or words that change the
ephemeral dance event into an enduring object in time?  The invitation to the viewer is to engage with the object of the book as a process of discontinuity and disruption, an entanglement of contradictions that never-the-less go on, continue and repeat, a repetition which while not the same still adds to the accumulation, the inclusion of ‘things’ that fall off the body, fluids that spill out of it and make a mess, ends that don’t fit
anywhere, false starts, digressions, returns, decompositions as well as compositions and so on…

Dancing the book (2010) [unique book]

Residues from: Dancing the book: a detournment a performed paper given at the National Art Library (NAL) of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2007). 
SOLANDER BOX SIZE 100 x 350 x 300 mm
CONTENTS Grey French dustcoat, Au Molinel, size 5; book of NAL requisition forms Japanese stab bound 210 x 150 mm, Favini paper, linen thread; hand written notes for the talk on NAL requisition forms bound
with a paper clip 210 x 150 mm.
Bound by Jason Workman

no hope no reason (2004-2010) [unique book]

SOLANDER BOX SIZE 125 x 300 x 250 mm
CONTENTS Loose-leaf book with hard cover slipcase 12 x 214 x 210 mm tied with white cotton bias tape.

Corps(e) de ballet (2010) [unique book]

SOLANDER BOX SIZE 100 x 300 x 225 mm
CONTENTS Rebound original found book Soviet Ballet (1943) by Iris Morley, bookbinding cloth, book board 180 x 250 mm. Hand-cut pop-up image of Act 4 from SWAN LAKE, p xviii, xix.
Rebound by Jason Workman

HEADINGS & FOOTINGS(2009/2010) [edition of 50]

SOLANDER BOX SIZE 120 x 255 x 195 mm  
CONTENTS 50 Laser colour printed books 148 x 210 mm, stapled, performer: Renee Whitehouse, produced with Spiros Panigirakis for Clubsproject

Gross (2010)

SOLANDER BOX SIZE 85 x 265 x 310 mm
CONTENTS Electric light box, sheet of A4 paper that has been
crumpled and flattened 144 times, 189 x 263 mm Box constructed by Jeph Neale

An Officially Dead Book (2005-2010) [edition of 2]

SOLANDER BOX SIZE 90 x 228 x 290 mm
CONTENTS concertina folded book 17 x 137 x 220 mm, and slipcase 23 x 143 x 226 mm covered in Mingeishi Paper, and cast polyester resin
book 20 x 148 x 220 mm embedded with final fragment of decayed book. 
Book and slipcase constructed by Jason Workman.

Resin book cast by Jeph Neale  

A Little Hair Reading Hood and a Little Hair Book (1998/2010) unique books

Circular concertina book 105 x 465 mm signed and dated by the artist
and Jean-Paul Rosette (hairdresser), cardboard bonnet covered in
human hair (artist’s) 220 x 230 x 215 mm, cream ribbon and Somerset
Velvet Grey paper molting mats.

a pair of quires (2009) [edition of 2]

SOLANDER BOX SIZE 100 x 440 x 340 mm
CONTENTS two stacks of 25 sheets of A4 paper. A title page and 24
sheets titled crumpled and flattened and numbered.  Each sheet has been
hand crumpled and flattened 1-24 times: title sheet 210 x 297, sheet 24
190 x 264 (approx.)