The Overcoat
Sarah Dobai
Four Corners Books
Text by Nikolai Gogol
Hardcover with brown paper jacket
88 pages
290 × 215 mm
2015
9781909829039
In The Overcoat, a lowly government clerk’s life is briefly transformed by the extravagant purchase of a new coat. This new edition is accompanied by artwork from Sarah Dobai, who has taken a series of images of commercial displays, taken in London and Paris, to reflect upon the story’s preoccupation with material desire and illusion.
About the Artist
Sarah Dobai’s practice is based in photography, film and video. However, her interest in working in differing contexts has allowed her production also to take other forms such as the artist’s book and most recently performance. In broad terms Dobai’s work engages with the everyday, realism, artifice and illusion in relation to city life and cinematic or pictorial conventions. The artist’s film and photographic works have come about through a performative and reflexive process or are made on location where the latent atmospheric qualities or its material economy animate the image. The work is often centred on the human figure, the subject being defined by their circumstances rather than by their individual characteristics. This approach intends to ground the use of fiction or narrative in the conditions of everyday life or reflexively in relation to the conditions of the production and consumption of the work itself.
About the Publisher
Four Corners Books seeks to bring art history to life. Our aim is to explore unfamiliar corners of visual history, share the stories we find, and publish them as well as we can. Run by Richard Embray and Elinor Jansz, we’ve been making books since 2003. Our aim is to create a space to reflect on artists and creative outputs from our recent past that have often been overlooked. It’s our mission to champion this creativity, in an accessible way.
