Black and white and Read all over

by Ally Froude

May 2, 2008

A MANDURAH library is currently housing a sculpture with a meaning that you can literally ‘read like a book’.

Artist Graham Hay has created the sculpture, called “Brain Sell”, made up of more than 5000 books belonging to the Save the Children Foundation. The sculpture is unfurling at the Falcon eLibrary & Community Centre - positioned southbound on Old Coast Road - in honour of the annual Stretch Festival which begins today.

The festival is an arts and cultural event held in the Peel region. It incorporates dance, painting, music, writing and performance. Festival co-ordinator Jane Tillson says that the idea of Stretch is to give artists the freedom to be creative.

“It’s about stepping back and trusting them to express art in a way that means something to them,” Tillson said.

Hay, whose art illustrates his interest in the organisation of arts and societies, says it was a fabulous opportunity to make something that displayed the Peel community’s enthusiasm.

“Everybody loves a challenge,” Hay said. “It provides a focal point for the festival, for the book sale to raise funds, and it was a social catalyst in that it drew all sorts of people in.”

Hay took a week to build the sculpture, with the help of volunteers, into the shape of a Brain Cell complete with branching dendrites.

“How many books do you read in a lifetime?” he quizzed. “How do you cram all that into your brain?”

“The idea came from the notion that individuals are a bit like brain cells; exchanging and broadcasting information and images all the time.”

The Stretch Festival runs from the May 2 to 4, but the sculpture will be on display at the community centre until May 14. The 5000-plus books will then be dismantled for a two week book sale held by Save the Children.

“It was a symbiotic agreement,” said Tillson. “They had nowhere to sell their books and we needed them for our sculpture, so we arranged to borrow them with the promise that afterwards they could use the library premises to sell them.