Book Art – Ros Rixon

This week I have chosen to look at the work of Ros Rixon as part of my series on Book Art and this will be the third of six artists I intend to introduce to you through the series.

I am particularly fond of Ros Rixon’s work because I had the chance to work with her during an exhibition I curated for the O3 Gallery in Oxford a few years ago. The exhibition was called Tell Me A Picture and featured artists and illustrators. Rixon’s work was very popular with the public and was featured in a review by The Oxford Mail – the image below is me gazing (rather cross-eyed!) into one of her spheres.

Image Source: The Oxford Mail

Rixon creates sculptures out of her books, which usually remain titled as the book was titled – always carefully selecting her book partly for how it is named. She began working with books whilst getting to grips with ‘the meaning of art’ at University. The research she did left her considering the words around her in the books that took over her workspace. The sculptures emerge as Rixon explores a book’s form and the words held within. The viewer is given the opportunity to consider whether a book is less revered as an unravelled sequence of sentences, a reformed stream of consciousness, lacking grammar and structure, but essentially the same words as if the book sat on it’s shelf in it’s regular form.

I really like the simplicity of Rixon’s work – an intricate process forms a calm and even uniform structure, so very different from it’s original form, but still whole and meaningful.

More of Rixon’s work can be seen on her website. All the photographs in this post were taken by Rixon, except where noted above.

Update: Click for the rest of my Book Art series.