Guitar: Sarah Tripp
Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop is delighted to be one of the co-hosts the online programme of writing and artworks made to accompany the reading of Guitar! by Sarah Tripp. Six artists were invited to respond to Guitar! In different ways each artist helped shape Guitar! into its final form published by Book Works in 2021.
Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop’s connection with “Guitar” or at least the project that was to evolve into “Guitar” started in 2016 when Sarah Tripp came to ESW for a short residency with the aim of researching and writing some new material. We formed a book group of artists and staff from the community here at ESW to enable Sarah to share the words she was producing with others, to gauge their reaction and to hear their commentary on the work. These texts would intermittently appear in manila over the next few months and we would meet with Sarah to discuss what we had been reading. The last of these sessions was in 2017 and in the intervening time the work has been through many iterations, it has grown and evolved, changed its form and content and developed off shoots (one of which is this website) but still, at its core are the ideas that were present in that first conversation.
Guitar! describes the contours and conditions of writing – interrupted, in flashes, or in restless moments through the night. A narrator listens; as a child learns to speak there is a re-acquaintance with the strangeness of putting a feeling into words. There is a yearning for meeting, and an idea of love or companionship as a sense of being met. Reading is punctuated by a series of black and white images of buskers, photographed by Francis McKee in Glasgow. Cover artwork by Ciara Phillips.
Sarah Tripp is an artist, writer and lecturer based in Glasgow. Previous Book Works publications include You are of vital importance, 2014, and ‘Aide-Mémoires: As if’, published in The Happy Hypocrite – What Am I?, issue 5, 2010, edited by Maria Fusco. Her writing can also be found in F.R. DAVID (Berlin), 2HB(Glasgow), and Space Poetry (Denmark).
Guitar! is generously supported by Creative Scotland and The Glasgow School of Art.
Image: Guitar July, Francis Mckee, courtesy the artist and Bookworks
