137 x 190mm, 90 pages, Colour printing, Perfect bound, Softcover, 2024

An accompanying publication for “The Thieves”: a collaborative exhibition by Josie Perry and Francis Jones. The show centres around a series of colour pencil drawings and a hybrid-form social science fiction text, presented as a publication and an audioscape. The story follows a commune living on the outskirts of a rapidly expanding neoliberal city, narrated by four individuals who have been unofficially exiled due to their refusal to conform to the city’s work standard, which rejects communality, compassion and pleasure. The narrators explain how they came to form the commune and imagine alternative means of living together.

In the audioscape, fragments of the Thieves are voiced by Gloria Dawson, Hussein Mitha, Isaac Harris and Nat Lall, who have each contributed a text of their own to the publication, and are also visually depicted in four character portraits. These contributors were invited to join the project due to resonances between the Thieves and their own creative practices, and the fictional characters have been loosely based on real friendships. In this sense, the project as a whole can be understood as analogous to the story’s narrative of sociality, and is a homage to our queer and creative communities in Glasgow.

Published by