Stillborn Experiments is a unique book piece that originated as a large-scale wall drawing in the 1980s. To create the marks, the artist used a crudely improvised cork striking tool, an experiment in mark-making designed to subvert the overtly controlled nature of traditional drawing.

A year after the original drawing’s completion, the work was deconstructed and reimagined as a book. The binding employs a traditional raised cord sewing method — common through the mid-18th century — rendered in silver leather and blocked in gold leaf. This juxtaposition of a disciplined, historic binding with a visceral approach to mark-making grounds the raw spontaneity of the original drawing within the permanent, tactile architecture of the book.

Originally titled Stillborn, the work was encased in a bespoke white drop-back box. In 2020, the piece was re-titled Stillborn Experiments following the addition of a text element. This text reconfigures a passage from Robert Morris’s Blind Time Drawings, reflecting his early influence on the artist’s practice. The book’s final page bears the subtitle: Homage to Robert Morris.

Text

A long series of stillborn experiments involving the body addressing a sheet of paper under various constraints led (perhaps by chance?) to the attempt to work by not watching and watching the page. The ambition to put print on a new footing may have been there, but this may not have been the reason the drawings were made in the first place. Such reasons sound too much like rationalizations put forward after the fact. Robert Morris, Blind Time Drawings