Book 29   1484/1984 The Big question for which I cant find an answer Penn, C. (2009) (Fig. 27). Unique artist’s book. Stab binding.  Re-worked images and text. Mixed media including water color and spray paint.  36 pages. 31.4cm x 43cm  x 2cm.   Book 29. Collection: Cheryl Penn

Once I had prepared the book 1484/1984  (Book 25) for a collaborative project with  Estelle Liebenberg-Barkhuizen, I thought I would also like to work on those particular pages and topics again,  to collaborate with myself in a way, and to see how different my interpretation would be to Liebenberg-Barkhuizen’s.  Besides that,  I felt my raison d’être  for the book,  the question of religious control, might not be how Liebenberg-Barkhuizen would interpret the book; so I decided to rework the pages.  I photocopied the pages I had given her on cream paper.

The reason for this choice was that the original inspiration for the book 1484/1984 was the diary pages of  Winston from 1984 by George Orwell which were cream.  The books asks the  question which I still don’t have an answer to; How and Why do certain entities manage to mass manipulate despite reliable documented evidence of extensive torture and murder en masse; why do people believe in and surrender their gift of eternal life – eternal life -  into the hands of an organization like this one who teaches for doctrines the commandments of men.

I used  ‘stab’ binding to refer to the aggression displayed by the Catholic Church in the year 1484 when authority was given by Pope Innocent to begin the Spanish  Inquisition.