The Bristol Art Library (TBAL) is an art and performance project created in 1998 by British artist Annabel Other. It consists of handmade books in a library the size of a suitcase.

History

The project was devised as a protest at the closure of the original Bristol Art Library. The library consists of handmade identically-bound books on a wide range subjects produced by individual contributors from all areas of the arts and sciences, each catalogued according to the Dewey Decimal System. The books are contained within a small wooden cabinet and made available when Other "performs" the library in the guise of the Head Librarian. Although TBAL is primarily an artistic endeavour, it borrows the rhetoric of, and operates as a public institution with affiliations to official library organisations worldwide. Readers must fill in appropriate application forms, and adhere to strict library rules whereupon the books can be read using a reader's ticket whenever the library is open for lending. Membership is free. Friends of The Bristol Art Library (FOTBAL) can sit on a special cushion when reading books, and receive the library's internal newsletter. Assistant librarians attend training sessions led by the Head Librarian including book-stamping and shush-ing techniques. TBAL has a gift shop selling tea towels, bookmarks, badges and postcards. The library travels from venue to venue in a hand-pulled red shopping trolley. The Bristol Art Library officially opened its doors in New York at Printed Matter, Inc in 1998 (it lent its first book to an air hostess during the flight from London to New York). Since then, TBAL's interdisciplinary collection has toured worldwide to over 200 venues and events including

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

Museum of Jurassic Technology The Museum of Jurassic Technology at 9341 Venice Boulevard in the Palms district of Los Angeles, California, was founded by David Hildebrand Wilson and Diana Drake Wilson in 1988.Tony Perrottet" The Museum of Jurassic Technology: A throwback to t ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art,

De La Warr Pavilion The De La Warr Pavilion is a grade I listed building, located on the seafront at Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex, on the south coast of England. The Modernist and International Style building was designed by the architects Erich Mendelsohn and S ...

, Glastonbury Festival,

Hay Festival The Hay Festival of Literature & Arts, better known as the Hay Festival ( cy, Gŵyl Y Gelli), is an annual literature festival held in Hay-on-Wye, Powys, Wales, for 10 days from May to June. Devised by Norman, Rhoda and Peter Florence in 1988, ...

WOMAD WOMAD ( ; World of Music, Arts and Dance) is an international arts festival. The central aim of WOMAD is to celebrate the world's many forms of music, arts and dance. History WOMAD was founded in 1980 by English rock musician Peter Gabriel, w ...

Hauser & Wirth Hauser & Wirth is a Swiss contemporary and modern art gallery. History Hauser & Wirth was founded in 1992 in Zurich by Iwan Wirth, Manuela Wirth, and Ursula Hauser, who were joined in 2000 by co-president Marc Payot. In 2020, Ewan Venters was ap ...

Somerset,

Tate St Ives Tate St Ives is an art gallery in St Ives, Cornwall, England, exhibiting work by modern British artists with links to the St Ives area. The Tate also took over management of another museum in the town, the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture ...

,Tate St.Ives, 2 November 201

Retrieved 13 November 2018. and toured extensively in the USA, Poland and Japan. It has a growing membership of over 12,000 and houses in excess of 250 books. The Bristol Art Library twentieth year commemorative badge

References

External links

The Head Librarian - Channel 4 short-film about The Bristol Art LibraryThe Bristol Art Library HomepagePerformance Research - On Libraries
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bristol Art Library Libraries in Bristol British contemporary works of art Performances