The Dark Object

This work proposes the covert materiality of narrative writing as a form of sculpture. It presents sculpture’s awkward relationship with conceptualism through the pseudo-conceptual ideology of a fictional institution. The sole student is forbidden to make objects. Increasingly isolated in The School of Sculpture Without Objects and battling with institutional directives and solitary confinement, the student exercises the prohibition on making things by writing stories. These narrate a series of power relations through explicit encounters with texts, objects and authorial figures.

The book was reprinted in 2013.

This authored paperback book was commissioned by Stewart Home at Book Works, London for the Semina series. This work has been available in bookshops, libraries and galleries. Sections of the text have been read in a series of live-readings and installations, including De Fabriek Eindhoven, Holland (2012), Space Gallery, London (2012), City Lights, San Francisco (2012) and Motto, Berlin (2011). The book was exhibited as part of The Book Lovers M HKA, Antwerp, an internationally touring group show.

Palmer proposes extended forms of writing as sculpture. By highlighting the role of words, in place of objects, the works typically refer to absence, often employing visceral descriptive language to construct physicality. The artist-protagonist is Palmer’s agent on the page, teasing out the material significance of objects, negotiating social spaces and power dynamics. The activity of sculpture (e.g. arranging objects, a theoretical, sensual and experiential enquiry into objecthood) is formulated in words. The devices of literature and fiction, such as plot, voice, narrative, character and rhetoric, are exploited as sculptural media.