Artist constructs Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four from pulped Dan Brown books
ITV News Wales Reporter Rhys Williams spoke to David Shrigley, who has constructed limited edition copies of the novel as part of an art project
An artist who created 1,000 new editions of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four from pulped second-hand copies of The Da Vinci Code - has described the novel as “really important”.
David Shrigley, 55, constructed limited edition copies of the dystopian novel as part of his Pulped Fiction art project.
They will go on sale at a book store pop-up at Oxfam's charity shop in Swansea - it made the headlines in 2017 when it asked customers to stop donating copies of Dan Brown's thriller due to the amount they had been given.
Shrigley said: “I think it’s (Orwell's novel) really important in that people in every sort of political climate project meaning onto it, and over the years it’s sort of meant different things to different people.
“I mean, George Orwell, I think, always intended it to be a warning, it wasn’t necessarily a parable of an existing state, but it was kind of a warning of what can happen when we don’t value our democracy.
“We don’t have to think too hard about the way that our current society is ordered to see some parallels.”
Shrigley said that the process of pulping the books to form something new was a “very direct reference” to the Ministry of Truth, the workplace of protagonist Winston Smith whose job involves rewriting historical documents.
Nineteen Eighty-Four came out of copyright in 2021 and Shrigley cited this as the main reason behind his choice to use the book in his project.
The artist said that Pulped Fiction is “certainly not a piece of literary criticism” and mentioned that both of the books “presented themselves” to him “in different ways, for different reasons”.
He says a series of “strange coincidences” linked the project to Orwell’s novel and the narrative "sort of happened by accident."
Shrigley said:"It turned out that the book designer’s grandfather proofread the original Nineteen Eighty-Four and then his sister actually proofread this version of it.”
“That was just one of many very strange coincidences and sort of odd things that happened along the way.
“The paper mill we used burned down, for example, which was quite difficult to deal with.”
Some of the limited edition books will be available for sale at Oxfam Books & Music, Swansea, during the weekend starting October 28, with remaining copies sold online after the event.
Each book in the edition has been signed and numbered by Shrigley and fragments of the original novels remain on the paper.
The artist is also releasing a 40-minute documentary telling the story of how the project came to be and the hurdles his studio faced along the way, from Covid 19 lockdown to the now burned down paper mill he had partnered with.
There will be free hourly screenings of the documentary at Swansea’s Volcano Theatre during the launch weekend.
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