The House of Books Has No Windows

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The House of Books Has No Windows

2008

Medium:
Installation with approx. 5 000 second hand books, without sound.

Dimensions:
200 x 175 x 110 cm

Commissioner:
Commissioned by Modern Art Oxford and the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh with the support of Outset Contemporary Art Fund.

Cardiff & Miller

This is a house made entirely of antique books, mostly english literature published in the United Kingdom. Spines out, pages in, the work is a library turned in on itself, a space of infinite possibility where nothing may be read yet everything imagined. The work has no windows and in the absence of external stimulation, we must imagine the worlds of the books, and hear the voice in our head that talks to us when we read. Books, the stories they tell about the opportunity they offer for escape into other worlds, are a key inspiration for Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller.