Ben Waddington

Book launch and exhibition

Fri 3 July, 4-8pm

Showcase Gallery, Jubilee Centre, 130 Pershore Street B5 6ND

Don’t Please Tell Anybody is a project 30 years in the making, that being the length of time I’ve been collecting these lost notes and hundreds more like them.

Torn-up notes fascinate me. My inner ‘Sherlock’ delights in carefully recovering the fragments, reassembling them like shattered ancient history and then inferring the stories’ lost details. The urgent words and their inflamed response being recorded on the same page—as presented here—is something that neither writer nor receiver would have seen. These are unrequested repairs and it’s an uneasy feeling to even partially reveal such intensely personal moments. But that’s what writers and artists do—we explore and reflect the human landscape, finding hope and meaning in anguish and disorder.

The book launch coincides with the opening of the exhibition Tears, being further notes and street-find sculptures, gathered over a similar duration to the material for Don’t Please Tell Anybody.

Books can be purchased on the day for £8 or in advance by making a donation to the Crowdfunder that allowed the book and exhibition to happen.