Pillow Book - Madonna

About the Pillow Book series;

A pillow book is a collection of notebooks or notes collated, a celebration of aesthetics and beauty in the everyday. In Japan these idle notes are generally referred to as the “zuihitsu” genre. I have taken the idea of an altered book to create these two  paper sculptures, referencing the sensual film of the same title made by Peter Greenaway in 1996. The film is set in Japan and female character, Nagito who has a fetish for calligraphy on the human body, meets her soul-mate, Jerome, an English translator. I have created this fan shaped work, where the hard cover of the book was cut to create the spines of a fan. On each spine is lettered in gold a gender pronoun for male and female and delicate feather linocuts are printed onto gauze and pinned to create the fabric of the fan or feathers of the pillow book. The top of the fan is constructed from male and female mezzotint nudes that have been cut into spine shapes and interspersed to create a lenticular illusion of male/female forms. The female and male dancing figures form the fulcrum of the work, balancing on a fragile gauze printed globe of the world. A rope etching forms the handle of the fan and is a subtle reference to the Japanese fetish custom of binding.

The smaller pillow book uses the inside pages of a foreign language dictionary with a mezzotint nude etching inserted into the cutout words. The book has been cut into long strands and curled to give the illusion of volume, while the overlay of delicate winged feathers create a visual heart and the illusion of a soft fabric pillow.