Veronica Bailey Exhibition

‘Hours of Devotion’ & ‘ Shelf Life’ is an exhibition of two new series of photographic works by the British artist and Jerwood Photographic Prize-winner Veronica Bailey launching this month.

13 large works from ‘ Hours of Devotion’ and 20 from ‘ Shelf Life’ will hang at Colnaghi, the oldest Old Master dealer in London, at 15 Old Bond Street from 8th May until 6th June.

‘Hours of Devotion’ is a body of work that resulted from an invitation from Coutts to explore the Old Staff Library; founded by Angela Burdett-Coutts (1814-1906) in the 1850’s as a philanthropic resource for Coutts’ staff.

This collection consists of largely nineteenth century works covering a plethora of subject matter, many in tooled leather bindings, with lusciously marbled and gilded page edges as can be seen in the works ‘ Russell’s Modern Europe’ and ‘ Curiosities of Literature - Disraeli’ . Bailey presents the Coutts’ books as opulent neo-gothic monuments on an appropriately impressive scale. Exhibiting ‘Hours of Devotion’ at Colnaghi, offers collectors the chance to view images inspired by the Coutts’ Library whilst surrounded by The Colnaghi Library.

‘Shelf Life’ is an altogether different, self-contained visual essay stemming from Bailey’s involvement with the Coutts’ library. Ignoring the books’ content, Bailey has shifted her focus to the bindings themselves – verso and recto - cropping uniformly to endow particular significance to their spines. The surfaces - marbled card, spun cloth or soft animal skin - are testament to the aging process of time, light and the reader.

The series of 48 works of ‘Shelf Life’ offers Bailey’s collectors the opportunity to design their own ‘library’ of works that can be altered to suit a different home or mood.

Veronica Bailey commenting on ‘Hours of Devotion’ said, “once books have been handled, read and made part of a library, they assume an aura. I wanted these photographs to retain something of that aura, of the time, as well as of the people that read through the pages of these beautifully crafted books. These images were not to be cropped. They are objects without abstraction."

Bailey’s previous work includes the Jerwood Photographic Prize-winning ‘ 2 Willow Road’ (2003) on the architect Ernö Goldfinger, and ‘ Postscript ’ (2005), which was a visual meditation on the passionate yet volatile wartime affair between Lee Miller and Roland Penrose. These series have been exhibited by galleries in the USA, Canada and South Korea, as well as Germany and the UK. Her work is seen in prestigious private collections both in Europe and worldwide; and in such collections as the V&A Museum, Coutts & Co. and Stephenson Harwood.