This slideshow requires JavaScript.

You may have noticed Speech Baubles already in the the Library @ GoMA. The library staff have also gathered a rather fine seasonal booklist to accompany the work. Installed since 1 December we asked Penny to send us her thoughts about Speech Baubles and reasons why she approached the Library staff at GoMA to install it.

“I love GOMA and its library and spend a lot of time there. I first considered placing anonymous interventions in the form of bookmarks in books, but realised they might be not last long enough to be seen (if they were taken).

I then proposed using my practice of embroidery (I also use photomontage, painting, performance and installation) to create an installation. Throughout my work I use what I have termed ‘Speech Bubbles’ – overheard gems of conversation, recorded, anonymised and sewn onto traditional style samplers. These snippets are frequently revealing of the lives of passers-by and their humour, problems and experiences.

For this work I read many, many books either with a xmas theme, or which contained pivotal Xmas scenes. I put a call out amongst acquaintances, and soon realised that we remember xmas through songs and films – less so books. This led me to unveil xmas scenes in some surprising literary sources: from the Diary of Anne Frank, to the oeuvre of Katie Price (my eyes!) to classics. I tried to create a memory of xmas by sharing curated words onto labels, placed on the branches of a xmas tree.

Libraries fascinate me: they are places of learning, shelter and safety as well as precious repositories of knowledge.”

Penny is an artist living and working in Glasgow. She has had work shown and acquired by Bury Art Museum and also shown in The Text festival there. In 2012 she curated and produced ‘Packing and Mourning’ as part of The Mutual for Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art and she is also writer (The NME, BBC The Guardian, published writer of fiction). Penny completed her Masters at Glasgow School of Art in 2011. For more information visit her blog.