Dear Reader,
This is an invitation from Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art in New Cross, London, where from 21 January to 3 April 2022 we are staging a free exhibition about monuments, history and memory.
For the exhibition, 46 artists have been invited to propose new monuments, and to question the role that monuments play in reinforcing power structures, gathering and representing communities, and preserving national memory. Several artworks in the exhibition consider how monuments have been brought into sharp focus in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, environmental crises, and Brexit.
We would like to invite you to take part in a project entitled Police Book Exchange. This national project, already staged at the Whitechapel Gallery in 2021, invites visitors to the exhibition to donate or suggest books that they would like members of the police to read, and vice versa. The aim is to create a form of dialogue between the police and the community. As a gallery firmly embedded within both the Goldsmiths University community, and within the London-wide cultural community, we’re hoping that you agree that this presents a unique opportunity to communicate and ask questions through reading.
A selection of books already donated by members of the public will be available to read in the gallery during the exhibition, in addition to an invitation that we have made to our local police station. We are now inviting you to participate by thinking about what books you would like members of the police force to read?
- If you would like to participate by donating a physical book, please drop these off at Goldsmiths CCA and mention the 'Police Book Exchange' during our opening hours noted here.
- You are also welcome to suggest a book to add to our public reading list (policebookexchange.org), by following the instructions below.
Upon donating or making a suggestion, individuals are welcome to share their name and the first part of their postcode, or for their contribution to remain anonymous. Please email goldsmithscca@gold.ac.uk if you would like to make a suggestion or have any further questions.
Please feel free to share this invitation,
With best wishes
Goldsmiths CCA team
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Format: Author surname, author first name, book title, year
E.g. Zahedi, Abbas, Police Book Exchange, 2021
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1. R. D. Laing, Knots, 1970 - Emily, E9
2. Azumah Nelson, Caleb, Open Water, 2021 - Richard, E14
3. Smith, Robert Paul, How To Do Nothing With Nobody All Alone By Yourself, 1958 - Wells, N4
4. Sarah Ockwell-Smith, The Gentle Discipline Book
5. Manzoor-Khan, Suhaiymah, Postcolonial Banter, 2019
6. Pat Zietlow Miller and Jen Hill, Be Kind
7. Goffman, Alice, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, 2014
8. Rankine, Claudia, Just Us, 2020 - Siobhán, E9
9. Storch, R., & Engels, F., 1975, The Plague of the Blue Locusts: Police Reform and Popular Resistance in Northern England, 1840–57 - Siobhán, E9
10. Thompson, E. P. The Making Of The English Working Class, 1963 - Siobhán, E9
11. Friere, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 2017 - Siobhán, E9
12. Yves Klein, The Foundations of Judo, 1954
13. Henri Lefebvre, The Missing Pieces, 2004 - Emily, E9
14. Daniel Joseph Watkins, Freak Power Hunter S Thompson’s campaign for Sheriff, 2015
15. Healy, John, The Grass Arena, 1988 - Antonia N8
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