One of my favourite artists, and a recent discovery, is Sue Johnson; her work is very varied but it seems she often uses book art as a form and museums and archives as departure points.
Quaking Aspen Vol. 1 is an artists' book in the form of an archive box file, as an edition of 20. What I assume are letterpressed manilla files hold found documents creating an archive of unknown significance, a cabinet of curiosity in paper form.
Menagerie is a series of prints of boxed objects which take on another aspect of the cabinet of curiosity and remind me of Joseph Cornell's work.
I guess I really connect with Sue's work because it follows similar lines to my own practice and where my research and ideas are taking me. The archive box editions are very close to the kind of thing I am doing with the BAO project at the moment, especially as it is an edition and not a one off like many archive-like works are. This idea of reproducing a one off archive as a series of multiples touches on several threads of interest; one stems from the whole Walter Benjamin / John Berger thoughts on art reproduction, the idea that a work of art is lessened when in multiplicity; another comes from the archive being now thought of as having an affinity with libraries, and so with books, and the printing press, a place that was created for reproduction purposes.
Sue's object boxes are similar to my own 'bundles project', a work in progress which is evolving into some sort of cabinet of curiosity type of sculpture/installation which has the possibility to grow into some sort of cataloguing project which might end up in a artists' book...
Anyway, that is the first artist I wanted to discuss with you in relation to my own work. Hope you have fun discovering her website as I did and I really hope I get to see her work in the flesh at some point soon.
Abigail
