Library’s end (1995-2025)

First assembled in 1995 as a 3.9 metre long sculpture, the paper card catalogue had lain, mouldering in gardens and in a paddock, until it was retrieved in 2025. A still intact section has been remounted and returned to an educational institution. Thirty years has reduced it to a stained assemblage of barely readable fragments such as “CHARLES DICKENS”, “COTTON” and “DANCE MUSIC”. The original school library catalogue’s cards date from the late 1970s to mid 1980s. Similar relic, superseded catalogues are still held in the catacombs of the State Library of Victoria. Knowledge is reconsidered here through decay and transformation by the nonhuman.

This work is Book I of a series of artworks crated in response to the 2024 Tate Adams Memorial Creative Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria and Baldessin Studios.