Naked Witch: An Autobiography

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In response to requests from the Legal Deposit Office The Vanity Press produced a comprehensive bound catalogue of the ISBN artworks and the data information forms used to register them.

Her work explores how experiences are translated into language and the ways in which actual or imagined events are fictionalised and mythologised. The way in which the text is laid out, written in staggered blocks which increase in width as they progress down the painting, reinforces a strong sculptural presence in the work. It’s a way of describing ourselves – an attempt to stall time long enough to make some kind of reflection, not of the stuff around, but of us, the flesh. For Banner, bells signify the simplest form of communication – an instrument that requires no music; a language without words, yet with multiple and conflicting meanings.With both approaches Banner transcribes the object of her looking in a manner which in part resembles the processes that would be used for traditional figurative drawing, but with an end result in written rather than pictorial form.

These absurdist fantasies represent an endlessly deferred future and reveals a complex relationship with the contents of the annual compendium to which Jane later dedicated his life.Often using parts of military aircraft as the support for these descriptions, Banner juxtaposes the brutal and the sensual, performing an almost complete cycle of intimacy and alienation. These pieces took the form of solid single blocks of text, often the same shape and size as a cinema screen. She has said that these works are an attempt to describe something through close observation without the device of editing. Banner's current work encompasses sculpture, drawing and installation but text is still at the heart of her practice.

All publications registered with an ISBN must be deposited in the Legal Deposit Office of The British Library, yet the singularity of Banner’s project makes this impossible. The title of the work refers to the expressive and experimental nature of the piece with its drips and washes of ink. As a collection it embodies the history of manned flight and the development of an unwieldy military industry. From her ‘wordscapes’ to her use of found and transformed military aircraft, Banner juxtaposes the brutal and the sensual, performing a complete cycle of intimacy, attraction and alienation.

Banner is interested in the tradition of the nude and the issues that surround its depiction, such as questions about gender and the history of description per se.