Launch of Leading Actors N-Z and Character Actresses A-K, The Spotlight Project by Denise Hawrysio

Saturday 24 October 2015, 5 – 7pm
Launch of Leading Actors N-Z and Character Actresses A-K, The Spotlight Project by Denise Hawrysio

6pm in conversation with Denise Hawrysio

The source material for these artist books is Spotlight, the UK’s entertainment industry’s primary casting resource for actors and actresses: its directories remained the bedrock of the Spotlight Service until 1995 when it went online. Each book contained over 5,000 publicity portraits and was produced biannually in both male and female editions. Hawrysio’s Spotlight Project began with incising by hand each of the faces within the directory, to produce altered books characterised by a complex form of 3-dimensional layering. Recently, she has begun to re-photograph the pages of these altered books, to produce a series of soft cover books, each having the original sequence of the voided profiles. There are twelve volumes of each; entitled Leading Actors N–Z and Character Actresses A–K, each approx. 84 pages, with a descriptive yet poetic text on the second page.

Denise Hawrysio artists’ books are in collections at Victoria and Albert Museum, Joan Flash Artists’ Books Collection, Chicago Institute, The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Chelsea Art Library, London, Guildhall University, Exeter School of Art, Bruce Peel Collection, Edmonton, Yale University, New Haven, Manchester Metropolitan University, College of Communications, London, and several private collections.

Billboard by Denise Hawrysio.