Stuart Mugridge

Plane - The Birmingham Series of books explores various notions of the space of a book. Using a simple aeroplane motif suspended between the pages of the book representing the flight of imagination, Plane describes the creative space present in a book.

Volume - The Birmingham Series of books explores various notions of the space of a book.

Between its covers and title pages Volume contains a pocket with a fold-out net or plan. The net is a scaled-down representation of the three-dimensional space between the pages. It is the physical space, or volume, that the book inhabits.

Enter a Cloud -Enter a Cloud is inspired by a poem of the same name by the late St Ives-based poet WS Graham. In his poem Graham uses the passage of the cloud across a clear blue West Penwith sky to describe a moment in time and a sense of place.

In my version of Enter a Cloud the cloud motif moves incrementally across the double-page spread from left to right above a horizon line.

On the title page the 'horizon line' is seen to be a scale of minutes, and so for each page turned the cloud moves in time as well as space to represent the chronological space of the book.

Corner- This bookwork uses the simple folio fold as an environment for sculptural investigation. Through the four cards (so far) in the set the fold becomes a space to cower in or to watch from as well as a corner to peek around and an edge to climb.

I remember seeing Stuart's work at the British Library during my MA. I fell in love with the simplicity of the work, and the self-referential methods he uses to deal with book structures. I couldn't help posting the descriptions of his recent work, which are taken directly from his website.