Threads Through Sheffield

A visit to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh this weekend, introduced me to a piece of work by the British artist Tom Phillips; started back in the late 1960’s, Phillips work uses the obscure Victorian novel ‘A Human Document’ by W.H. Mallock (1892) as his ‘raw-material’. Re-named by Phillips as ‘A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel’ his work since the late sixties has been to alter and manipulate Mallock’s original book into an entirely new artist’s book.What I found particularly poignant was how he wasn’t starting from scratch, in fact he wasn’t even starting with something half finished, he started with a completed and fully published book or ‘product’. Using an existing narrative, Phillips draws, paints, scratches out printed words to reveal new narratives within the existing pages of text.My thoughts turned to Architecture and what Phillips work could possibly mean for the discipline and for the profession. Firstly a valuing of process could be transferable, by how the project demonstrates the advantages of a ‘work in progress’ that is constantly evolving and attempts to replace itself by updated revisions. And secondly, developing an ability to craft something interesting and of value out of the mundane. Both characteristics which are of course “easier said than done” but non-the-less, I believe will become ever more important in developing an Interdependent Architecture.