Amateur and Collector
The Gallery @ Idea Store Whitechapel, 2012

The Gallery @ Idea Store Whitechapel presents an exhibition by Sharon Kivland, showcasing a selection of books and objects from many years. The publications range from small artists’ books to larger books in bigger print runs. The objects are sometimes multiples in limited – or even unlimited – editions.
Kivland employs the movement and displacement of ideas, words, images, and objects. Connections are woven in series, using strategies of appearances, disguise, impersonation, subtle dialogues, intimate suggestion, and a lack of historical fixity. There is a light touch, an irreverent approach to established values, in works that address education, identity, work, desire, and liberty.
The exhibition takes the form of a museum display; using three vitrines, the artist has laid out her wares and history. In addition, there is a text work for the wall, in which Zola’s novel Nana is abridged according to light and lighting effects, including metaphor.
Each book or object is accompanied by a new text, which both describes what is on display and suggests its part in a larger narrative. Works include Kivland’s re-working of fashion plates from 1848 and their descriptions; engraved lorgnettes, a magnifying glass, and a pocket mirror; red felt silhouettes of hats and their models from 1871; a set of tropes for use by authors; and a selection of books, including the artist’s venture into the holidays of Sigmund Freud.
There are also objects and images from Kivland’s considerable archive/collection, which frequently provokes an idea or work. This includes cards for communion, photographs of confirmations, a wedding wreath, postcards of bathers, and pierrot/pierrettes.
Kivland is a collector, which is self-evident. She is also an amateur in the original sense of the word: a person of taste and a lover of things of which she has a certain knowledge as well as appreciation. One may also think of something that is practised for pleasure rather than for gain (as she often bemoans).

Curated by Sotiris Kyriakou, Idea Store Whitechapel London