Nicholas Jones: Transforming Books

Nicholas Jones works out of Melbourne, cutting, folding, and reassembling secondhand books into sculptural objects that force a different kind of reading. The film follows him in his studio as he handles discarded volumes, some with their spines split open, others carved into layered reliefs, and talks through why he treats a book as raw material rather than a fixed object. His pieces turn pages into topography and text into texture, and the camera lingers on the process of cutting and layering paper as much as on the finished works. Jones discusses how his sculptures ask viewers to reconsider what reading actually means once the words themselves become secondary to shape and form. It is a brief, focused look at one artist's practice rather than a survey of book art generally, built around his own explanation of the ideas behind the work and close footage of the objects themselves.