British artist Becky Beasley explores relationships between photography and objects, the body and interiority in a way that is highly subjective and yet developed through deep immersion in the thoughts and methods of other artists and writers. Literature is particularly generative for the artist, providing her own work with a place to start from and to journey into.

Spring Rain is an artist’s book and the title is taken from a short story by Jewish American writer Bernard Malamud (1914–1986), reprinted here. A minimal tale of the ambiguities of everyday human relations, of things unsaid or unsayable, the story opens onto concerns that lie at the heart of Beasley’s practice.

The book also features installation images, an extract from Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (another inspiration for the exhibition), alongside the artist’s own writings and a critical text by Parveen Adams.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Spring Rain at Spike Island, 26 January 2013 – 31 March 2013, and Leeds City Art Gallery, 11 July – 22 September 2013.