Bookwork
Henry Moore Institute Sculpture Research Library
15 February – 28 March 2025

This display presents work by graphic designer Joe Gilmore (b. 1968), alongside artist’s books from the Sculpture Research Library collection. 

“I kept asking myself how a book could be infinite. I could not imagine any other than a cyclic volume, circular. A volume whose last page would be the same as the first and so have the possibility of continuing indefinitely.”
— Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths

In his manifesto, The New Art of Making Books (Kontexts 6–7, Maastricht, 1975), the Mexican artist Ulises Carrión makes a series of provocative statements about books. Under the heading ‘What A Book Is’, he states, “a writer, contrary to the popular opinion, does not write books. A writer writes texts.” In Carrión’s ‘new art’ (which came to be known as the artist’s book, or ‘bookwork’), the objective was the unification of form and content. 

Gilmore exhibits a selection of works relating to books: a generative screen-based piece, Work in Progress (2022–24); three paintings on book pages (2024); and a selection of artist’s books, ARS (2023–25). 

Through this body of work, Gilmore seeks to expand his practice as a graphic designer – through the medium of the artist’s book – in order to investigate the material, formal and contextual systems and conditions of book design, production and publication.  

The work is supplemented by a display of books from the Henry Moore Institute Research Library collection, including bookworks by Carl Andre, Seth Siegelaub, Robert Barry, Lawrence Weiner, Sol LeWitt, Lucy Lippard, Sara MacKillop and Susan Hiller. These books were selected by Gilmore in order to frame and contextualise his work within a network of creative approaches. It includes books that have informed his practice, alongside others whose form, materiality or structure contribute to the ongoing exploration of the endless possibilities of the format of the book.