2 Willow Road 2003


Title:
Goldfinger

Ian Fleming
Jonathan Cape
Oxford 1959

Title:
The Arrogance of Power

Senator J William Fulbright
Vintage Books 
New York 1966

Title:
Human Response To Tall Buildings

Donald J Conway
Dowden Hutchinson and Ross
USA 1977

Title:
The War's Best Photographs

Odhams Press 
London 1941

Title:
A Look At My Life

Eileen Agar
Methuen 
London 1988

Title:
View From A Long Chair

Jack Pritchard
Rouledge and Kegan Paul
London 1984

Title:
Woman In Art

Dr Helen Rosenau
Isomorph Ltd
London 1944

Title:
Memoires 1886-1962

Amedee Ozenfant
Seghers 
Paris 1968

Title:
Hungarian Cookery Book

Karoly Gundel
Corvina Press 
Budapest 1976

Title:
Hope's Windows

Makers of Fine Windows 1818-1951
Henry Hope and Son 
Birmingham 1951

Title:
Erno Goldfinger

Major Mata
Akademiai Kiado 
Budapest 1973

Title:
Born Free

Joy Adamson
Collins and Harvill Press
London 1960

Title:
Emerald and Nancy

Daphine Fielding
Eyre and Spottiswoode
London 1968

Title:
The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana

Translated by Sir Richard Burton 
and F F Arbuthnot 1963
George Allen and Unwin Ltd
Great Britain 1963

Title:
Paris

Martin Hurlimann
Thames and Hudson and Atlantis Verlag 
Great Britain 1957

Title:
A Girl Like I

Anita Loos
Hamish Hamilton 
London 1967

Title:
Art of the Avant-Garde in Russia

Margit Rowell and Angelica Zander Rudenstine
Selections from George Costakis Collection
New York 1981

Title:
Sex and the Office

Helen Gurley Brown
Author of 'Sex and the single girl' 
USA 1964

Title:
Victor Vasarely

Marcel Joray
Editions du Griffon Neuchlatel-Suisse 
Switzerland 1965

Title:
Crimson Ramblers Of The World, Farewell

Jessamyn West
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 
New York 1970

Title:
From Your friends in Norway

J W Eides Forlag
Bergen
Norway 1946

Title:
Kitsch - An Anthology of Bad Taste

Gillo Dorfles
Studio Vista
London 1969

STATEMENT

2 Willow Road was a winner of the Jerwood Photography Award 2003. The series concerns magnified bookedges, taken from the library at The National Trust property, 2 Willow Road in Hampstead, London. This modernist house, owned and built originally by Austro-Hungarian architect Ernö Goldfinger in 1939, reflects a treasure trove of 20th century art, history and culture.

The images form an alternative portrait of the private, but now public lives of Goldfinger and his wife, artist Ursula Blackwell, since their deaths in 1987 and 1991. Their interconnecting careers of architecture and art are revealed in this fascinating amalgam of reading material, which ranges from anthropology to literature, politics and sociology, in fact all aspects of contemporary life. By exposing the edges of the paper of chosen books, one is reminded of the everyday human interaction we have with the written word and the paper on which it is printed. There is symbolic meaning behind what we choose to read, keep and share with others. As a former Willow Road guide, I was able to piece together traces of history about the loves of the Goldfinger's through the book's titles, but it was only through exploration and exposure of the unseen edges that we can discover the assembled paths of knowledge that have been consumed. The beauty in the form is clear, with it's subtly-defined linear abstraction. A new, non-conventional narrative is formed, reconstructing past relationships and encounters through ghost traces amongst the bruised paper edges. The titles of the books, such as Human Responses to Tall Buildings, Kitsch, or A Girl like I, can be juxtapositioned against The War's Best photographs, Born Free, and Goldfinger (Ian Fleming) revealing the Goldfinger narrative from a different perspective.


PRINT INFORMATION
Edition 20 + 1 A/P. Durst Lambda Fuji Archival Print.
Print size 1: 594 x 420mm. Edition 12
Print size 2: 841 x 594mm. Edition 5
Print size 3: 1189 x 841mm. Edition 3


All artwork and images © Veronica Bailey 2024.