Home Manoeuvres

Artist: Bruce McLean 
Author: Mel Gooding 
Publisher: Knife Edge Press 
Date: 1987 
Condition: A handmade artist book, produced in an edition of sixty (numbered 1-50 and I-X) this copy being numbered 13, signed by the artist and author on the rear endpaper. Hand-sown in red thread through the black paper covers, the front cover bears a thickly textured potato print in yellow. The front cover has detached along the stitching but is intact. Internally the book contains twelve original hand-coloured lino-cuts by McLean interleaved with printed translucent sheets bearing text phrases. Held in the original fitted stiff card box. 

Home Manoeuvres was published in 1987 to coincide with McLean's exhibition entitled 'The Floor, The Fence, The Fireplace' at Anthony d'Offay Gallery in London. The text is by McLean himself and writer and critic Mel Gooding and was published by the Knife Edge Press which they formed together in 1985.

Bound in a soft cover, the bright yellow, thickly textured potato-print on the front cover links it to another of McLean's bookworks entitled 'A potato against a black background'.

The initial page of text is a poem that uses word-play and idioms referring to furniture and domestic interiors, the room a metaphor for life or a situation entered, successfully negotiated and exited.

The subsequent pages interpolate single phrases on semi-translucent paper, with lino-cuts, hand-painted by the artist in daubed, pure colour. Placement of the text associates the edges of the page with the walls of a room and each phrase corresponds loosely to the image it precedes, partially visible before the page is turned. Elements of a home environment are listed, conveying a sense of absence.

Examples of this book are in several institutional collections, including The British Museum and the V&A.