I have just finished reading ‘I
object’ [Thames & Hudson] a book described as ‘Ian Hislop’s search for
dissent’ to accompany the exhibition of the same name in the British Museum
curated by him.
I read it as a guilty pleasure
because it appeals and pampers the inner-dilettante in me. It is a ‘lazy’ book with gobbets of easily digested
information on a bewilderingly wide range of well-illustrated objects with Ian
Hislop’s comments in speech bubbles scattered throughout the text. A text, I assume was written by Ian Hislop’s
co-author Tom Hockenhull.
I would describe it as a
relatively small format right-on coffee table book, something to dip into
rather than read through in the way that I did.
There are attempts in the book to pull together the disparate objects
and the selection is divided into three rough sections, but there is no real
over-arching theme or premise other than the concept of ‘Protest’ to link them
all and to give them direction.
Having said that, the selection
is good fun, and it does allow a sort of narrative that uses a whole range of
odd objects to make points, and it also gives some objects an airing that they
don’t perhaps deserve, but they are certainly worth considering in the context
that has been created.
I have to admit that I thoroughly
enjoyed this book and I delighted in the variety of objects from dishes to doors,
from clogs to cartoons, from statues to stamps and from the unexpected
illumination that such diversity gives.
It has the eclecticism that an institution after my own heart, The Open
University, would appreciate – and it also has academic footnotes, a
bibliography, a full list of illustrations’ details and an index to make the
book academic enough to read with an easy conscience as a graduate of said
institution!
What the book also does is encourage
thought about a whole range of approaches that would take this exhibition
further: a range of graffiti, but not the Banksy type, the scrawled, the hasty
the amateur, the ad hoc; barricades considered as installations; hand lettered
posters and placards, with letters that don’t fit, unplanned, raw; images of
destruction, the smashing of windows, the throwing of paint; defacing posters,
coins, adverts, road signs – there are ideas aplenty to develop!
And, true to what I’ve written I
have thought of making an object of my own as my response to reading the
book. It will take a small purchase on-line
and the re-use of something I have had since I was a child and a shop in town,
but I think it will work.
This is something that I will
post when it is complete! And perhaps I’ll
send a copy of it to Ian Hislop and Tom Hocknhull as a sort of thank-you for
producing this stimulating experience!
