A Seven Day: Artists Book

This exhibition, a collaboration between the Slade School of Fine Art UCL and the Foundling Museum, examined the roles of the image and the written word, bringing together artist and writer through the medium of the artists' book.

Artist Caroline Isgar worked with writer Jane Borodale and artist Eddie Farrell to collaborate on this project through their shared interest in the Foundling Hospital.

The project integrated Borodale's interest in both the concerns of eighteenth-century illegitimacy and the immediacy and brevity of the journal form, with Farrell's fascination with a worn brass plaque in a stretch of pavement marking a boundary of the original Foundling Hospital. The result, their Artists' Book, was launched at the Slade School of Fine Art prior to the exhibition at the Foundling Museum.

Traditionally the relationship between the image and the written word has followed a well trodden path, the role of the image often an illustrative one. The Slade School of Art hosted a research programme which confronts this convention. The artist Caroline Isgar was the principal investigator of the project and worked with writers and artists to investigate the role and function of the image and the written word through the vehicle of the artists’ book. The nature of the collaboration of the artist and writer, the choice of artist and writer, the influence of the genre of their work and the simultaneous creation of the image and the written word creates a new meaning, a further dimension.

The project was funded by the UCL Friends.