London. November 2011.
THIS IS WHERE IT ALL BEGAN.
DISCOVERING THAT THE STREETS OF HACKNEY LOOKED LIKE BOOK SHELVES IN THE DUSK OF A SATURDAY WINTERY AFTERNOON, whilst on a pub crawl looking for The Albion in Clapton. With all the windows lit up like TV screens, the stories of the lives inside them, was the moment when I realised its ‘Books into Buildings’.
I had found a way to screenprint on book fore-edges long before, but shelved the idea until I found the right subject to fit the medium. Kept it quiet on the crawl but took it back to the studio to find a working method for both illustrating the facades and a technical process for registering multiple layers to screenprint directly onto the edges of old books.