Project NEMESIS

A stack of advertising flyers, printed on coarse cheap paper of various colours -pink, green, buff, or plain white. Sometimes there is a body of text or even photographs printed on the flyers.

This ancient tome is occasionally bestowed by the Great Old One Delaoth. This peculiar and massive history's pages are made of gold as thin and delicate as paper; an endless number of raised silver runes and complex pictographs march across its 3,000 or so pages. The runes themselves are completely indecipherable, but gently brushing ones fingers across their raised surfaces causes their sounds and meanings to echoe within the readers mind. 

Typically consisting of a 13” x 17” x 19” triangular playing board with one set of 11 pieces and an opposing set of 37 pieces. Material for the pieces and the board vary depending on the age of the game and the culture, which produced it. Wood, bone, stone, ivory, precious metals are all possibilities. Rumours of playing pieces created from mummified human flesh, bones and organs are more likely (but not necessarily) to be a reflection of the game’s scandalous reputation than actual fact.

The playing area is formed of a chaotic and haphazard pattern of geometric and non- geometric shapes. The shapes are delineated in a mad conglomeration of colours and materials with no regard for logic or symmetry.

Afghan rugs are a staple of the local craft scene and hold histories, stories, ancestries and whatnot. 

Ciudades en Sombras was penned in Mérida, Mexico in 1685 by a Guatemalan clergyman of mixed Mayan and Spanish ancestry named Encero Hurtado. Early in his career, Hurtado claimed to have been captured during an uprising of Maya against the Spanish. After the rebellion was crushed, he claimed to have dwelt among a break-away faction of Itzá Indians. There in a hidden city built upon an ancient temple complex in the jungles of Guatemala, he served for some 30 years as a scribe among the Itzá priests. 

These drawings, plans and documents by Hitler's architect do not readily yield their darker secrets. At first glance, and to the uninitiated they appear to be only a set of megalomanic plans for the restructuring of Berlin. 

Inspired by a journey to to the east in 1925, the British artist Henry Baines began experimenting with the art of sand painting upon his return to London. His mandalas were greatly admired in art circles and he got around the problem of their impermanency by preserving them with photography. Many of these photographs he gave to friends or traded, and it was around this time that he came to possess a copy of The King in Yellow. The book inspired his sand art in a new direction, away from blatant Eastern influences towards a more surreal style. Many in-the-know note the increasing presence of the Yellow Sign, albeit stylised, in his later works.