We are so happy to be hosting a new show in our studio ‘Haunted Paper’ by one of our favourite authors, Jeff Young. Jeff is a Liverpool born writer and author of books including ‘Ghost Town’ which was shortlisted for the 2020 Costa Biography award and ‘Wild Twin’ winner of the 2025 Times Literary Supplement Ackerley Prize. The show runs from 7th August - Friday 19th September 2025
‘Haunted Paper' displays (for the first time) a selection of the notebooks, diaries and collages Jeff has worked on since he was younger, which have inspired his creative process.
Image © Dorothy
'I’ve always kept notebooks. Small one for my pocket, larger one for collages and thoughts about the writing project I’m working on. Over the years the notebooks have developed, from pages of roughly scribbled notes, ephemera and cuttings from newspapers into something more formal and self consciously ‘artistic’. Once there were photos from magazines, postcards, bus tickets and beer mats, roughly sellotaped onto paper; now the pages are formal constructions that I think of as transmissions, or seances. To make a collage is to make a visual version of the thing I want to write. And making images changes my imagination – or charges it. It’s like making an imagination battery that will drive the writing process. During the writing of Ghost Town and Wild Twin I kept a number of notebooks and worked on them almost daily. I saw – I see – them as magic spells. An archive of fleeting moments captured before they fade away. They summon up ghosts, language, images, memories, ideas, incantations, hexes, ritual alchemy. The collages are improvised, spontaneous, seeking shape and rhythm, placing objects and images in the frame that will – hopefully – conjure language. My writing is visual, it seeks to evoke pictures in the mind of the reader, of the listener. The collages in the notebooks are the visual beginnings and equivalent of the text.'
Jeff Young, July 2025
Image © Dorothy
Image © Dorothy
Prints of the pages from Jeff’s notebooks displayed in the exhibition are available to buy from our studio for the duration of the exhibition.
The exhibition also includes a short film commissioned for the show by Dorothy and shot by Matt Bell.
Video © Matt Bell
Exhibition runs 7th August - 19th September 2025
⏰ Opening hours
Monday - Friday 9am - 5pm
Saturday - Sunday Closed * exceptions below
• Special Saturday opening on 6th September 11am - 4pm
• Special late night event planned for the end of August. Contact for details.
📍 Dorothy / 22 Jordan Street / Liverpool / L1 0BP * entrance is round the corner on Jamaica Street
Follow Jeff Young on Instagram here.