The artist’s book documents Huws’ Floor pieces, from her first installation at the Riverside Studios, London in 1989 to her most recent installed parquet floor at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, in 2011. The publication is supplemented with essays from Ulrich Loock and Hans Rudolf Reust.
Im Mittelpunkt der Publikation steht die Arbeit The Forest aus dem Jahr 2008-09. Sie besteht aus 88 Flaschentrocknern, wie sie früher in fast jedem französischen Haushalt zu finden waren. Aus der dichten Formation dieses ‚Waldes’ von Alltagsobjekten leuchtet ein aus Neonröhren geformter Flaschentrockner hervor. The Forest ist eine ebenso attraktive wie verwunschene Skulptur, die in den Raum ausgreift und Rätsel aufgibt. Die Wahl des Flaschentrockners als Ausgangspunkt ist untrennbar verbunden mit einem der großen Revolutionäre der Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts – mit Marcel Duchamp
"Duchamp's oeuvre, his readymades and installation with richly evocative titles, still full of unsolved riddles today, enticed Bethan Huws into speculating on the meanings of and encoding the obscure references. Through her many years of intensive investigation of Duchamp she developed her own profound referential framework and a highly original interpretation of the older artist's ideas. With texts, photographs and notes on the artworks she has created a research laboratory, a kind of artistic mind map, opening a window onto understanding her threads of thought. This artist books [sic] documents all of her more than 500 notes."--Publisher's online catalog.
Installations full of wordplay ("spot the dog") and films full of sky: Welsh-Parisian Bethan Huws's work in a wide range of media plays well together on the page, in part because the kinetic scribbles of her colored-pencil storyboards share both the vivacity of her texts and the pastoral colors of her film.