William English – Perfect Binding

Perfect Binding is an experimental artist’s book loosely themed around vanity/inertia and celebrity/obscurity in 1960s Leicester. It covers tensions between popular and unpopular fashion, music and art of the period. ‘Mod’ culture and unspecified crises of masculinity haunt the pages.

Perfect Binding is based around several psychologically illuminating interviews conducted by experimental filmmaker William English with figures ranging from Stephane Raynor (co-founder of BOY boutique), to unheralded artist and eccentric Jim Mellors aka Victoria Ashley.

It is by no means a local history book. Leicester is symbolic of a wider ‘geographical centre of England’ = ‘middle-of-the-road-ness’ which the book’s interviewees seek to escape at seemingly terminal velocity, each in their unique, and sometimes counterproductive, ways.

Art direction on this full-colour publication was overseen by Daniel R Wilson aka Meadow House, Radionics Radio and member of electroacoustic quartet Oscillatorial Binnage.