The Cesspool of Rapture, by Joseph Noonan-Ganley

This book shows the interaction of two bodies of language from the English-American couturier Charles James (1906–78). The column registered to the left margin logs James’s public speech, lectures, and theories of the stripper and burlesque dancer Gypsy Rose Lee (1911–70), while the column registered to the right logs transcripts of his private arguments and correspondence with her. Spacing, repetition, colour, and italics both emphasise and shift James’s intended meaning. Readers should pull the text together as they make their way through, undertaking a similar labour of composition to the work of a zip’s slider. Joseph Noonan-Ganley is an Irish artist based in London. Noonan-Ganley’s exhibitions, performances, and publications address themes of sexuality, appropriation, and authorship through extensive manipulation of the material remnants of artists, designers, sports people, dressmakers, and writers. His exhibitions are episodic installations interweaving HD video, spoken word audio, writing, sculpture, and textiles.