GBP 25.00
A tittle-tattle tell-a-tale heart is the first artist book by Athena Papadopoulos conceived as a diary and a novel.
The publication is a collection of drawings and thoughts of the artist’s love story, published by CURA.BOOKS in two different parts bound together with elastic. Utilizing a list of cosmetic, medicinal, and edible ingredients, Athena Papadopoulos typically stains layers of cotton bedsheets with red wine, lipstick, hair dyes, Pepto Bismol, and self-tanner. Connoting the practice of self-augmentation – of ‘dolling oneself up’ – these intense hues draw attention to how such commodified materials are marketed towards certain consumer archetypes. These archetypes then appear in drawings and photographs of women layered into dense collages: Papadopoulos chemically transfers, cuts, and stitches her own writing into and alongside imagery gleaned from literature, art history, and popular culture.
Like loose pages torn from a journal, the artist’s writing is encrusted with lascivious catcalls, terms of endearment, drunken pejorative slurs, and teenage slang. Letters spell out double entendres and innuendos: TAPPED, BATTERED, BRUISED, SPIT OUT.