Novel Sculpture Floods Library with Folded Books

MEDIA RELEASE

22 September 2013

Novel ‘Paper River’ Sculpture Floods Library with Folded Books

The ‘final fold’ was added to a community-created, re-purposed book sculpture at the Palmerston North City Library at the weekend...

Made entirely from intricately folded and fanned books, it adds a whole new meaning to the saying ‘take a leaf out of someone’s book’. Community groups were given free rein to rip and crease pages under the guidance of author-publishers David Lupton and Bettina Anderson, re-purposing books from their initial faulty print run of ‘Between Rivers – the Manawatū’ into a rippling book river.

“We used several hundred books, some 12 litres of wallpaper paste and the elbow grease of around 100 members of the community to fold the 112 pages of each book into the various waves, ripples and rivulets that make up our ‘reading’ river.” said Bettina.

Thousands of David’s images of the Manawatū region were recycled from the book and applied to a 15 by 5 metre wall on the ground floor of the library as a giant collage, with the ingeniously folded books applied over the top to create an enormous paper river.

“We raised a few eyebrows when we were working in ‘tearer-rist’ mode,” said David. “Ripping pages in a library setting is not something you see every day, but once visitors heard the story of how the first print run of our book failed due to a paper fault and how we were trying to use them creatively instead of binning them - they were keen to join in.”

Described by City Librarian, Anthony Lewis, as clever and creative way to recycle an un-saleable book run, he welcomed the speculation and chatter that the piece inspired as it took shape. “It’s a real conversation starter!” he said.

The reprinted (non-faulty!) second run of the book ‘Between Rivers’ is available from all good booksellers ($79.95) or online at www.haunuipress.co.nz.

ENDS

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See http://www.facebook.com/MemorableManawatu for more images of the Book River taking shape and http://www.haunuipress.co.nz/book-river.html for more information regarding the project.

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