Bookbinding Techniques Leave the Book Behind

Adelene Koh uses traditional bookbinding techniques to make sculpture. Folding, gathering into signatures, sewing with thread, binding a spine: all of these were developed to keep a book working. Koh separates them from the page and uses them to build volume. The results do not resemble books but carry a book's logic of layer, stitch and tension.

Binding has always been closer to engineering than decoration. Coptic, long stitch and Japanese sewing each emerged to solve a specific structural problem. Moved into sculpture, their original purpose falls away and the structural reasoning remains. Much of the work highlighted by the Loewe Craft Prize in recent years sits on this line, which creates its own argument: recognisable techniques gain visibility in contemporary art, but risk being reduced to formal reference once detached from their context. What keeps Koh's pieces on the right side of that line is that the stitching genuinely carries load.