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Abstract
Ostensibly a narrative of the performing of Billets-Doux—a project involving the anonymous secretion of love-notes into library books—and illustrated with images of Ellen Bell’s practice, Bell’s paper will explore notions of books as material objects and private containers of closeness, public libraries as sites for performing intimacy and the artist as anonymous gift-giver.
Notes
1. ‘Acts of Love’ (2010-2011) – a series of altered photographs of couples, literary text spouting from their mouths. ‘Story’ (2011) – a plinth-like structure commissioned by Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, inspired by visitors posting names of their unrequited loves. ‘Talk to Me’ (2011) – a solo exhibition in the Chapel Row Gallery, Bath that included a wall-to-wall line of paperback books with sentences, cut through and raised, to mimic a continuous one-to-one conversation.
2. Writings of Intimacy in the 20th & 21st centuries, Loughborough University, 10 – 12 September 2013.
3. Sharon Old’s Poetry Reading, St Michael’s Church, Bath, 22 August 2009.
4. Talk to Me, 2011, Chapel Row Gallery, Bath.