Black in Yellow - 25 March 1999
The Yellow Pages Directory is one of the most telling indicators of our society - both literally and metaphorically according to artist, Hamish Black, whose recent sculptures made wholly or partly from copies of the Yellow Pages Directory are currently on display at the Kapil Jariwala Gallery in London’s West End.Black first started making sculptures out of the Yellow Pages Directory when he found that by cutting profiles into books he could make sculptures with a variety of shaped and serrated edges.
But Black didn’t want to use any old book. Using Yellow Pages contributed colour - yellow and other colours from the pages themselves, black marks and stripes from the pattern of printing. What's more, Black regards the familiar yellow book as something of a microcosm of society.
He explains: "It’s not a generalisation to say that the majority of the UK population has experienced the Yellow Pages Directory. They know what it’s for, what it looks like, what it feels like and most of them will have used it and interacted with it."
He continued: "If there was no other book left in the world except the Yellow Pages Directory, you’d be able to tell what type of world it was. By looking at how the Directory has evolved over the years, both in design and content, you can see how society itself has changed."
Black twists, cuts, stacks and shapes the Directories to form all manner of different profiles. His current exhibition includes a lighthouse, a landscape and a globe - a worldly theme runs through his work and is reflected in the composition of the sculptures themselves.
When stacked and shaped, the Yellow Pages Directory forms lines and networks which hint at longitude, latitude, natural networks and cosmic motions.
Black says, "Yellow Pages reflects society in its content and when sculpted it reveals that society, like Yellow Pages is a unified and interactive construct."
The Hamish Black exhibition is at Kapil Jariwala Gallery, 4 New Burlington Street, London until 24th April 1999. Take a book.
