Re-Covering

Curated by performance artiste and man about town Mike Chavez-Dawson, Re-Covering examines the interactions between literature and the physical world which it inhabits. Artists, comedians and musicians were invited to create their own cover designs for favourite books onto oak reclaimed from a Birmingham school library and fashioned into paperback-sized blocks. By removing the books from their branded, published forms, and the physical spaces which society reserves for literature, Re-Covering allows for unique, personal relationships between reader and text.

The Untitled Gallery is located in the bowels of the Friends’ Meeting House, behind the closed Central Library in Manchester. The visitor enters a space a little bigger than an Anderson shelter, with a shelf on each of the walls, displaying the re-covered texts. In the corner, they will find a writer typing away, their words projected onto a screen at the far end of the room in real time. The space is ideal for quiet, unrushed contemplation.

Each participant takes a personal approach to their chosen text. Some deal with the book’s content matter, for example Nicola Dale’s Farenheit 451, which sees paper flames rising from the solid wood. Others feature more emotional reactions, such as Lean Horsey’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, where the cover is hacked into the ‘book’. Mr Chavez-Dawson himself adorns A Clockwork Orange with an impressively penile graffiti tag, whilst Harry Hill turns the Old Testament into a block of Swiss cheese.

There are some extremely impressive and intricate designs on show. A Wittgenstein book has its back cover spiel minutely carved in, and a Velvet Underground biography features an etched cover. Italo Calvini’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller becomes a decorative, multimedia piece, as the playfully post-modernist text is reflected by a design which rises out of the woodblock, adding a further dimension to the text.

Although there may be a political angle to the exhibition, as artists create new meaning from the literal bare bones of deconstructed reading spaces, Re-Covered has a more personal feel, focusing on the relationship between reader and text, rather than the Big Society.

This exhibition runs alongside a project by Jane Chavez-Dawson. ‘Network Aesthetics – A Reading’ further explores the interaction between text and public space by presenting authors as performers. Seventy two writers will each spend three hours writing in the Untitled Gallery, with their words being projected in locations around Manchester, including The Cornerhouse and The Chinese Arts Centre . Each writer will take the final paragraph written by the last shift as their starting point, to create a linked text. Again, sense of place will infuse the writing, as authors are encouraged to take their location and the people around them as an aid to their work.

These projects will run until July 31, admission is free. Both form part of Not Part Of, Manchester's fringe arts festival.

Some more examples of Jane and Mike’s work:

Jane and Mike take inspiration from low-budget regional news shows And That’s All From Us

Jane directs your author in Billy Ruffian’s I Love You When You’re Not Masterminding My Downfall promotional film. Spot Workshy Fop on the Flying V Ukelele.

Mike’s alterego Robin Nature-Bold