The Readers

The Readers is a context-specific work that engaged staff working at all levels within The Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA).

Each person was asked to submit information regarding what they were reading over the course of one month in 2010. The titles of each book and one page of text comprising the first line of a specific page, formed the material of the work. These extracts were printed on sheets of paper bound in blocks and displayed on a wooden table. Visitors to the exhibition were encouraged to browse the blocks of paper and select pages to take away. This mode of dissemination of the work was integral to its meaning as a prompt for sharing, circulation and the creation of contingent communities of interest.

The work was developed from an earlier project, ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’ 2006; however, the level of engagement with the contributors in The Readers became extensive and critical to the work. The Readers thus extends previous themes in Tallentire’s research and practice by revealing the breadth of interests of a diverse community brought together in one institution. During the exhibition at IMMA the blocks of texts were reprinted many times and approximately 2000 pages were disseminated. The work explores reproducibility, value, the construction of the subject, and autonomy through active engagement with processes of choice. The generative principle of the work relates to ‘Nowhere Else’ 2010 where the engagement of the viewer is also central to completing the meaning of the work. For the exhibition’s publication ‘This and other things’ Tallentire invited artist and curator Vaari Claffey to create a text/image work responding to the titles and first lines that constitute the material in The Readers.

• http://www.imma.ie/en/page_212185.htm