Yesterday I saw a fantastic exhibition at the October Gallery in Bloomsbury. It's only showing until the 20th August so I urge you to get over there to see it.
As part of the centenary celebrations of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, photographer Jimmy Symonds has created 10 hand-made artist books for each decade from 1900. For this work Jimmy researched new words from each year, reducing the list until he finally produced this exhibition of one new word or phrase from each year illustrating it with a photo. Examples are 'avant-garde' , 'cloning', 'down-turn'. It is a fabulous project.
I'm gong back to take another look. Pity Jimmy hasn't published a book as this work is really worth being in your library.
12 comments:
I had better start swimming now, I might just make it.....
Excellent! Thanks for the links Mo.
What a great exhibit. If I were there, I'd make sure to see it. Like you, I wish he would publish a book. That would be most interesting.
This would be a great exhibition. Every year I read a news story about words that entered the language in the past year, and I recently read a book about changes in language. This exhibition does it artistically. Great!
If only....
I read the word -upshot- the other day in a turn of the previous century novel. Surprised me rather.
Never again will there be anything like Shakespeare's neologisms.
Having read your post this morning, I went straight away and you're right. It definitely is a fabulous project! I even had the chance to speak to Jimmy Symonds and told him how much I liked it and that a book would be much appreciated. Nothing planned in that direction though, so I'll keep the memory of some great photographs and some new English words I've learned. Thanks for mentioning the exhibition in your blog.
It sounds like a fun exhibit, I wish I could see it!
What a clever idea! He must have spent a lot of hours doing the research!!
Sweet!
I too wish I could go and see it, but today is the last day of my vacation. I now have to work one more year to get new vacation days...
How fascinating. I would just love to see it.
"Diana", was my first thought, when I saw this....
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