Spiral Bound

‘Spiral Bound’ is an ongoing interdisciplinary creative project first exhibited at Meyer Riegger Galerie, Berlin (21 November - 19 December 2015), including an artist’s book. Since 2015, Myles has undertaken research trips to the USA exploring the legacies of Best Products (1957 - 1997) and their collaboration with New York-based Sculpture in the Environment (SITE) architecture practice. Myles was awarded two Andrew W. Mellon Research Fellowships to carry out this research at The Virginia Museum of History and Culture; focusing on Best Product’s owners, Sydney and Frances Lewis, and their practice of bartering, enabling artists to receive merchandise in exchange for artworks. He travelled to conduct several interviews with James Wines of SITE and pursue further research in the USA. 

Myles situated this work within contemporary debates around retail apocalypse and the thresholds between gift and sale, where capitalism unravels. He produced a series of new artworks depicting basic goods placed on the shelves of a church’s in-house food bank overlaid with images screen-printed by hand onto ‘true-grain’ film from his research trips, juxtaposing differing yet coexistent systems of value and modes of existence for objects. The church building in Richmond, Virginia used to be a Best Products catalogue showroom and is the only remaining SITE building that stands in anything close to its original form.

Myles was awarded a Visual Arts Residency at Cove Park, Scotland, to develop the research outcomes of this project. His research has led to a number of symposia including ‘DOING RUINS’ as part of ‘GSA, NVA: On ruins and Ruination’ at CCA, Glasgow (18 September 2015) and colloquiums at VMHC, Richmond (2017 & 2019) and an artist’s book Spiral Bound with essay by Dr Dominic Paterson, and a review in Art (2016).