Daniel Rapley
27 January – 3 March 2012
Payne Shurvell
London
EC2

For the last 18 months Daniel Rapley has been writing the King James Bible by hand, on standard feint ruled notepaper, using a ballpoint pen. Covenant explores the conventions of artistic labour and productivity. Rapley often works on projects that are extremely labour intensive, setting himself arduous tasks and addressing ideas of commitment, focus and obsession.

Like much of Rapley’s work in Covenant, an element of trust, or an act of faith is required by the viewer with his installations, which deliberately employ a range of contradictory display systems. With only the top page of Sic (Rapley’s Bible) on view, the question is raised as to whether Rapley has in fact written the entire text by hand. It is this suppression of validation that questions the relationship between the artifact and an audience. (PS)

Tricks & Trade: I was in a good mood, an open minded, slightly wistful, anything is possible mood. Exactly in the right frame of mind to read the hand made drawings, telling of strange coincidences of a mundane day that oddly mirror the contents of an epic story and its monotonous copying. And as I reached the words The Same Deep Water As You I had made up my mind and invested a little faith in the authenticity of these large drawn passages.

click on the pictures to enlarge