Statement / Bio

In a time when the act of reading is changing significantly, the physical book as a mechanism for reading, is being brought into question. My practice is concerned with the book as machine, or reading machine, and bound up with an imagined escape from the page. Interests in Bob Brown in particular and his own imagined reading machine have led my practical work to develop into a combination of written, live and visual practices.

Through these practices I am currently examining how we read through machines and, in turn, how we interact with them. Using the physical page to describe or interrogate the way we read, especially through digital screens, and in so doing escaping or re-imagining the page as the conventional container for written language.

Another thread of my practice originates from site and location. Researching and investigating a specific history to a place; making connections to reading and the page, as well as connections to the current situation of the site and surrounding area, and then using and re-projecting this information within my work. Local archives and libraries are central to this investigation, often sparking relations to previous work and interests and becoming part of the re-projection of the work.

Abigail Thomas is an artist, currently living and working in London, UK. She obtained a Visual Arts (Book Arts) MA, from Camberwell College of Art, UAL in 2012.