C111 review

Downpatrick: Jennifer Trouton at the Grove Gallery

Jennifer Trouton: Tracing, 2004, installation shot

When we read a book we share time with the author. It is a quiet, personal relationship where our mind thinks about and interprets what the author has written. In a library we take down a book and flick through it as if some of the information it contains would spill out and make itself known to us.

Jennifer Trouton spent ten weeks in Banff on an Arts Council of Northern Ireland residency. While there she was drawn to the library. In particular, she started to look at a collection of old Shakespeare and poetry books that had been bequeathed to the library in 1938.

Her exhibition Trace at the Grove Gallery documented this interest. The images she creates use the covers of the books, the spines and pages from inside the books. One is made aware that they are library books, as sometimes the stamp showing the date the book is due to be returned can be seen.

Jennifer Trouton: Tracing, 2004, detail; courtesy the artist

The exhibition has a delicate, thoughtful feel about it that suits the gallery, which is housed in the newly built museum. I was enjoying looking at the images while reading the texts. There were some hand-written notes and marks that would have been distracting if I had been reading the entire book ,but I took them to be by the original benefactor and in this context they could be interesting.

Then I read the following, written by the artist;

At some stage, in addition to making independent original work I began placing subtle pencil marks on the pages of the books, depositing a residue of myself to continue along, intersperse and overlap with the existing words. I was drawn to the idea of becoming an element within their undisclosed history, perhaps months, even years would pass before my words or lines were noticed.

The idea of marks and writing left behind by the owner of the book might be an interesting distraction. A contemporary artist going into a library and marking old and interesting books seems a very doubtful act. What had originally interested me about the show, the relationship between author and reader, was gone. Jennifer Trouton is an artist and there is a similar relationship between artist and viewer as to author and reader. I wonder how she would have felt if people had sneaked into the gallery and drawn over her work?

Brian Kennedy is an artist and CIRCA Contributing Editor.

Jennifer Trouton: Trace, Grove Gallery, Downpatrick, December 2004 - January 2005

Article reproduced from CIRCA 111, Spring 2005, pp.79

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