Introduction by Simon Baker, Director, MEP, Paris.
Design by Jamie Shaw
Finalist Paris Photo Aperture Best First Book Award 2019
22cm x 33cm
Hardback monograph
56 pages
ISBN 978-1-907112-60-7
Rubbish, Dipping Sauce, grass, peonie, bum Maisie Cousins’s first photographic monologue comprising her most iconic images from the years 2015 – 2019. The images are selected from a combination of three of her most significant series, hence the title ‘Rubbish, Dipping Sauce, Grass Peonie Bum.’ The foreword is by Simon Baker, Director of Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris. “Hers is a world where not only do disconnected things resemble one another, but things fail to resemble themselves. In place of resemblance, everything is covered instead in a thick viscous layer of brilliant colour; a tactile varnish that transforms things alchemically but somehow also, at the same time, leaves them untouched.”
The book presents 44 colour images paired in large format, printed full bleed to the page. They are all contained within a shiny hardback gold cover, which refers to her installation of the work in her first solo exhibition ‘Grass Peonie Bum’ in 2017 at TJ Boulting where she had a gold floor covering an entire room in the gallery.
Maisie’s work is always intuitive and instinctive, she builds a direct connection with the audience by presenting objects close-up and visceral, full of colour and texture. The book similarly will be a full colour explosion for the senses, a beautiful big shiny object in your hand to feast on.
Maisie says: “I wanted to create a book from the past five years, my favourites from different projects and things in-between - like a best of. There are a lot of reoccurring themes and compositions. I felt I couldn’t move on from this work without putting it into a tangible object. I think in a time where image production is so fast, waiting to make a book feels really important.”
