Taking the Book Apart

The exposition opens up the artist’s investigations into the historical figure Ellen Gates Starr, co-founder of the Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago, Midwest United States. Reflecting on the life and work of Gates Starr and on the artist’s own works inspired by these, a particular focus of the exposition is the link between artistic mark making and political practice. By way of close reading and research, the artist excavates Starr’s artistic practice and writing, to explore how artistic mark making informed by Starr’s praxis might come to shed some light on our contemporary situation. The exposition also reconsiders some of the politics at stake for the Arts and Craft movement.