It’s not me, it’s you, a solo exhibition at Vessel Gallery, York St John University, brings together several text works by Carolyn Thompson that explore the manipulation of the novel, both in content and material.

Using literary fiction Thompson read during specific time scales, the exhibition explores the push and pull of the book in a world where conversation has become clipped and textual. An onslaught of sentences, retyped from novels read during the Covid pandemic, and all beginning with the word ‘you’, grow from the crevices of the gallery space, spreading like gossip across the walls. En masse and out of context, these words appear as affirmations, accusations or insults. A framed work made from phrases beginning with the word ‘I ’, cut directly from books read fifteen years earlier, completes the conversation, presenting a more restrained, inner-dialogue of ham-fisted attempts at self-revelation and blurted snapshots of confession. Together the works are humorous in places, yet sinister in others.

It’s not me, it’s you can be seen at Vessel Gallery, Phoenix Court, York St John University, Lord Mayors Walk, York from 23rd October to 20 November.