The above project is an extract from Gerry Smith’s The Universal History III. An installation shot of the complete work as part of this year’s Edinburgh College of Art MFA Degree show is below.  Gerry describes the whole project as follows: 

 The Universal History III is a “non-self portrait” made up of 396 postcards, each of which has a quotation from one of the non-fiction books in my library. The quotations were selected from pages which were chosen at random, and the intention was to discard the obviously quotable( no spectres haunting Europe here!) The relation between postcard and book is maintained via colour coding, and the work is arranged in alphabetical order by book title. The postcards are displayed on frames which are in effect collapsed bookshelves.

Gerry notes that before sending the email containing this text, the spell check picked up that he had written “bookselves” instead of “bookshelves” and that this same pun of shelf/ self appears in his Essential Reading project. 

VerySmallKitchen will hold a conversation with Gerry in Edinburgh at the Totakunst Gallery on June 25th at 3pm. More information about that event, and some notes by Gerry on his book works, can be found here.