TYPE HORSES: writers and their typewriters

Exhibition blurb: Before computers and i-things took over, anyone who had anything to say relied on the typewriter to make it happen. This exhibition explores the relationship between famous writers and their 'work horses'. Leonard Cohen had a bath with his; it ended predictably poorly. Cormac McCarthy bought a second-hand Olivetti for $50 and sold it 46-years later for $254,500. Ian Fleming commissioned a gold-plated number, on which he only wrote one novel – Live and Let Die. Larry McMurtry thanked his Hermes 3000 in his Golden Globe acceptance speech for the Brokeback Mountain screenplay. A Catholic priest told Anne Sexton, “God is in your typewriter.” Raymond Chandler declared: “Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.”

Through a series of illustrated posters and books, Zoe Sadokierski obsesses over the typewriters of 45 famous novelists and poets, paying particular attention to William S. Burroughs, Sylvia Plath and Tom Robbins. Viewers are invited to bash out the words to David Malouf’s poem ‘Typewriter Music’, or compose something of their own, on one of six working typewriters.