Sic, Ballpoint pen on A4 ruled paper, 2011 Daniel Rapley
27th January – 3rd March 2012
3,116,480 characters
1,189 chapters
783,137 words
31,102 verses
66 books
For the last 18 months Daniel Rapley has been writing the King James Bible by hand, on standard feint ruled notepaper, using a ballpoint pen.
Covenant explores the conventions of artistic labour and productivity. Rapley often works on projects that are extremely labour intensive, setting himself arduous tasks and addressing ideas of commitment, focus and obsession.
Like much of Rapley’s work in Covenant, an element of trust, or an act of faith is required by the viewer with his installations, which deliberately employ a range of contradictory display systems. With only the top page of Sic (Rapley’s Bible) on view, the question is raised as to whether Rapley has in fact written the entire text by hand. It is this suppression of validation that questions the relationship between the artifact and an audience.
Four hundred years after the first printing of the King James Bible, Sic will be one of the text-based works at PayneShurvell for Daniel Rapley’s first solo show since graduating from Chelsea in 2011.
Saint Ferréol in the middle ages compared the life of a monastic scribe to that of a farm labourer and had strict rules to prevent over-zealous scribes from altering text. Rapley too has transcribed this version of the Bible literally with no room for interpretation. In order to complete this grueling work, a rhythmic pattern of sameness and a loss of aesthetic identity was necessary.
It is Rapley’s use of the anonymous hand and low-grade materials that asks us to consider contemporary notions of labour, authenticity and authorship as positioned within a wider context of belief systems.
In contrast to the anonymity of Sic, Rapley will also be showing seven large text drawings titled Exigencies 1-7 which he was working on at the same time. Rapley’s mind would often wander from the cataclysmic to more mundane matters like the drip of a faucet or what he was having for tea. “He wandereth abroad for bread” (Job 15:23) came to reflect Rapley’s own preoccupation with a particular brand of Soya bread. These brief bursts of literary interpretations elevate the minutiae of Rapley’s life to beautifully rendered hand drawn manuscripts, as different but as painstakingly considered as Sic.
In conjunction with Rapley’s first solo show at the gallery, PayneShurvell editions have released Totem, a limited edition printed with a mixture of varnish and the artist’s blood.
Covenant is curated by Michael Hall.
www.payneshurvell.com
For further information and/or images, please contact Joanne Shurvell jo@payneshurvell.com / Mobile: +44 (0) 7977 996568
