‘Field Libraries’ features a series of Emily Floyd’s works recently acquired by the Town Hall Gallery. The colourful sculptures double as bookshelves, stacked with an ever-expanding ‘fair use’ library of booklets created by Floyd using excerpts from texts dedicated to eccentric perspectives on the subject of work.
Floyd works in sculpture, installation, printmaking and public art, and is renowned for her text-based sculptures and pedagogically inspired works. Her work draws on her family’s history of toy-making and her own upbringing helping in the toy workshop – but Floyd’s playful and deceptively simple sculptures are imbued with hours of research and engage with a range of disciplines, from social activism and politics to public education and literature.
Also on show is a series of screen prints made in collaboration with Negative Press that represent a catalogue of Floyd’s ongoing library project. Showing simultaneously are two more exhibitions, complementary to ‘Field Libraries’ and to each other, that explore ideas of play, learning and how we interpret the world: ‘Shape of the Life-World’ by Hawthorn Arts Centre resident artists Alysia Rees and Samantha Semmens, and ‘Forms of Play’ is a featuring Sarah crowEST, Jenny Zhe Chang and Henry Madin.
Town Hall Gallery
Until 12 March, 2017
Melbourne
© Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne
