Emi­ly Floyd
Field Libraries

Emi­ly Floyd’s work “… takes shape at the inter­sec­tions where sculp­ture meets pub­lic space and design col­lides with social cri­sis. It embraces ele­ments of expand­ed sculp­ture and a range of print media and typo­graph­ic arti­facts, includ­ing the poster and the man­i­festo. Floyd rene­go­ti­ates the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pub­lic address, crit­i­cal­ly engag­ing in increas­ing­ly diverse and unpre­dictable view­er­ship in debate. The top­ics of that exchange range from such urgen­cies as labour con­di­tions in a world where work has become increas­ing­ly imma­te­ri­al­ized, the trau­mas of migra­tion at a time when exile is the norm, and the imper­a­tive of self-orga­ni­za­tion as unprece­dent­ed and impro­vised forms of com­mu­ni­ty emerge across the globe. Indeed, Floyd’s work ges­tures toward new forms of social­i­ty, for which the art­work can serve both as provo­ca­tion and as venue. Her project for the 56^th Bien­nale di Venezia, Labour Gar­den, is an exam­ple of that theme.”

Ran­jit Hoskote, ​‘Emi­ly Floyd’, in All The World’s Futures, 56^th Inter­na­tion­al Art Exhi­bi­tion, Bien­nale di Venezia, Venice, 2015, p. 328

Index, 2015 is a new series of unique state screen prints made in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Neg­a­tive Press and rep­re­sent­ing a cat­a­logue of Floyd’s ongo­ing library project. Texts are ren­dered as bright­ly coloured blocks, con­tin­u­ing the artist’s long term inter­est in the con­flu­ence of Cul­tur­al Stud­ies and rad­i­cal forms of play.

‘Field Libraries’, 2015 com­pris­es 11 free stand­ing paint­ed alu­mini­um sculp­tures stacked with an ever expand­ing ​“fair use” library of book­lets ded­i­cat­ed to eccen­tric per­spec­tives on the sub­ject of work, includ­ing Zom­bie Marx­ism and Fem­i­nist Autonomism. Each Field Library incor­po­rates util­i­tar­i­an paper­weights, includ­ing a bronze cast fac­sim­i­le of the final vol­ume of Max­im Gorky’s child­hood mem­o­ries My Uni­ver­si­ty, 1922.