Serena Korda
The Library of Secrets

Horsebridge Arts & Community Centre Gallery 2

Tuesday to Sunday 10:00 - 18:00

The Library of Secrets was conceived out of a desire to celebrate the value and function of libraries. New initiatives ring the death knell for beautiful Victorian buildings that housed slightly ailing book collections, but had skilled librarians with a genuine desire to assist in the dissemination of knowledge and information.

The Library of Secrets is a hand-built olive and teak art deco library that has the institutional values of its Victorian original, placing an importance on the forgotten and overlooked. The Library houses an eclectic mix collection of books that have experienced many different lives and have finally found their resting place upon its shelves. The Library is a collection point for knowledge, thoughts and secrets, an archive that accumulates ideas and information through its travels.

The Library of Secrets has been in Whitstable for the last year with Head Librarian Serena Korda organising a programme of events, including a book club which has met monthly to discuss a series of books that relate to films starring Whitstable's much loved and now deceased resident Peter Cushing, including Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Graham Greene's The End of the Affair.

The installation also includes lost property found in books by Whitstable Library over the past year, a sound work and a series of photographs. Serena Korda, as Head Librarian of The Library of Secrets, will be in residence Thursday - Sunday each week.

Serena Korda is based in London. As well as exhibiting sculpture and performance in the UK she has been making site specific work since 2004 that responds to the social history of an area and the personal histories of people. Recent exhibitions and projects include The Answer Lies at the End of the Line, Art on the Underground 2008; walkwalkwalk: Stories from the Exeter Archive, SpaceX 2008; Intransit, Chelsea Physic Garden 2007; Worlds End Estate Book Club Debate! Chelsea Theatre 2006, walkwalkwalk, Camden Arts Centre 2006.