Books to Sea

A series of drawings made while Leverhulme Trust artist-in-residence at the University Hull. My residency responded to the whaling history of Hull from the collections and archives of the Maritime Historical Studies Centre, the Maritime Museum and Hull History Centre. Books were often my main window into the industry of over 200 years ago. This work comprises of pencil rubbings of book covers, primarily of books concerned with the whaling period of the city, approximately 1776 to 1867. Taking rubbings was my way of capturing these object’s materiality, and through it evoke their content, even if painfully aware that their meaning would remain somehow out of reach. The details revealed through the frottage technique was sometimes surprising. For example, in the booklet titled Hull Whaling Relics from the collection at the HHC, signs of ageing, institutional stamps and cataloguing tags are made much more tangible by the rubbing, becoming a poignant metaphor perhaps for the status of the city’s whaling heritage, obscured and hidden in archives and libraries.

All drawings are pencil on paper, 2013