Melanie Counsell Annette, 1998
Melanie Counsell Catalogue, 1998
Information
Annette
Annette is both a documentation of Melanie Counsell’s work over 7
years and very much a work in its own right. Composed of images taken from
the many Super 8 films Counsell makes as part of her conceptual
process, as well as from documentation of works in situ, the book presents
a flood of black and white images, not unlike a fragmented film. Reproduced
on transparent paper similar to tracing paper, the grainy images overlap
and repeat, sometimes evolving in succession, at others jumping between
frames of film, works and places.
Amongst images as diverse as clouds, drain pipes, buildings and wine
glasses, fragmented sections of Counsell’s own descriptions of her work will
appear, giving the reader a further insight into her work, complementing
the images. Together the images and fractured texts form a fabric of thoughts
encapsulating her work.
Catalogue
Published as a companion volume to Annette, the artist’s
ambitious bookwork, the catalogue will present the first published survey
of the
artists work. As the majority of Counsell’s work only ever exists
for the limited period of an exhibition documentation is the only record
of her work once its exhibition is over.
Structured around approximately a dozen ‘chapters’, each consisting of documentation of a particular work and the artist’s statement about it, the catalogue will encompass the development of Counsell’s work over 8 years, ranging through her work made for both galleries (including Matt’s Gallery and Galerie Jennifer Flay, Paris) and more unorthodox venues (including projects organised by Artangel and TSWA), and concluding with the concurrent project, the bookwork Annette.
Referencing the specific places for which the pieces were made as well as the pieces themselves, the book explores the essential relationship between location and creation in Counsell’s practice.
