MCA Denver is excited to present QWERTY, an artist book created in tandem with Tara Donovan's mid-career retrospective at MCA Denver. The book exemplifies Donovan’s fascination with repetition, each page illustrating the replication of single letter from the standard keyboard layout of a typewriter.
QWERTY references a work made early on in Donovan's career, Click (1991). This text was similarly comprised of single-lettered pages, the form of each letter determining the design of the complete page. During an interview with the Financial Times, Donovan recalls, “The recognition of the letter would essentially become obliterated, but it would create these pattern drawings.”
Having sold the original years ago, Donovan realized she was still in possession of the original typewriter and could potentially recreate the text. Donovan admits, “I became obsessed. I spent the better part of six months remaking the book...I know this typewriter intimately now.”
Published 2018 / Printed by Spirit Press / Bound by Roswell Book Binding
