NEW ROLE FOR OLD BOOKS AT STRETCH FESTIVAL

“Brain Sell”, made from books donated by the Save the Children Fund, the State Library and the City of Mandurah’s two libraries, will be installed at the Falcon eLibrary and Community Centre. Following the festival, the books will be sold off at the eLibrary with proceeds going to Save the Children Fund (Mandurah).

Mandurah Mayor Paddi Creevey said the charity had difficulty finding suitable premises for its book sale and was close to abandoning the project.

“So not only has the Save the Children Fund found an ideal venue for the book sale, but the stock is going to play a somewhat different, but still valuable, creative role before it’s sold,” Mayor Creevey said.

Over the past decade, sculptor Graham Hay has carved his way through 20 tonnes of paper while travelling the world fulfilling sculptural commissions and presenting workshops on paper sculptures and working with paperclay.

Graham’s largest sculpture was a 3-tone spiral in the foyer of the High Court of Australia in Canberra. For another in Fremantle, five hundred phonebooks were shaped into a tunnel to suggest the thousand who have visited the Fremantle Arts Centre gallery.

For the Mandurah sculpture, Graham and his volunteers will work from the simple idea: “How many books would you read from cover to cover in a lifetime? How big would the stack be? How would you organise them to show what they mean to you? What shape would you make?
 
Anyone interested in helping Graham with the installation of “Brain Sell” should contact Leigh Angilley at the Falcon eLibrary on 9550 3230 for further information.

Graham will also be giving a public talk on his work at the library at 3.30pm on Friday May 2 as part of the first day of the two-day Stretch Festival.

RELEASE ENDS

4 April 2008