Feeling with fingers that see by Stuart Whipps is the first in a series of books derived from the artists’ wide-ranging body of research into the human impulse to categorise, control and understand the world. The book’s origins are in an ongoing artwork by Whipps, A System for Communicating With The Ghost of Sir Christopher Wren, in which the artist explores an early iteration of sign language, pioneered in the seventeenth century by the architect and polymath Sir Christopher Wren. Whipps uses the system within photographs, installation, video and performance to both communicate with Wren from beyond the grave, and to disseminate pertinent messages discovered during his research.
Stuart Whipps is an artist based in Birmingham, UK. He often makes work about things he doesn’t understand and doesn’t know how to do. Currently this includes restoring a 1979 Mini with the assistance of former British Leyland workers, training to make geological thin sections at the University of Birmingham and working with a seventeenth-century sign language devised by Sir Christopher Wren. He works predominantly with photography and video alongside reconfigured existing or remade materials.