The photo at the top is of the display of Fletcher's objects at the Aram Gallery during the LDF. This interesting collection of objects is just a fraction of the things that Alan Fletcher has accumulated over the years and it's display was in parallel with another exhibition at the Kemistry Gallery in East London. Both co-incide with the re-issue of the book, The Art of Looking Sideways which chart Fletchers unique a personal approach to using the world as a vast visual source in the making of art and design. Charming and inspiring.
He says of the book:
'More of a visual jackdaw than a compulsive collector, I acquire stuff. Things which catch my eye. Ammonites in Morocco, votive offerings in Sicily, paper cuts in Hong Kong, glass pens in Tokyo. That sort of thing. I'm intrigued by useless information such as that eight percent of the population is left-handed, that giraffes only sleep five minutes every twenty four hours, that Italians kiss twice, the Swiss three time. I enjoy encountering incongruities - 'Blue movies in Full Colour'.
Like Wunderkammern, those eighteenth-century glass-fronted cabinets which displayed curios, this book is a collection of shards. In an unmarked field it is easy to wander...
Most books written on visual matters are authored by those who analyses rather than experience. Many are hard work and littered with academic jargon - autistic tendencies, cognitive expectancy, formative causation. They are concerned with the mechanics rather than the thoughts, with the match rather than the fire.
This book attempts to open windows to glimpse views rather than dissect the pictures on the wall. To look at things from unlikely angles. References to sources are occasionally provided to keep you going. The book has no thesis, is neither a whodunnit nor a how-to-do-it, it has no beginning, middle or end. It's a journey without an end'.
A book for all Visual Communicators