Richard Healy

Tenderbooks
Softcover, 68pp
148 x 201mm

The title Lubricants & Literature suggests a frisson of sexual possibilities coaxed by the book as a fetish object. This book unfolds a complex web of encounters already staged and also potently waiting to be discovered by the reader.

The scene is set in Cecil Court, London in which the famous occultist and writer Aleister Crowley performed an incantation in Watkins Books. In this private performance for John Watkins in 1929, Crowley made all the books in the store disappear, whilst simultaneously making them reappear. This tale generated a series of artworks by Richard Healy appearing as Lubricants & Literature at Tenderpixel Gallery. This publication acts as both a document of the exhibition and as an extension of that artwork.