Play Something Else Cowboy is a limited-edition book I made for my friends Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier in 2023, based on their shared life and art practice. The book has five volumes and features a wood-hardcover slip case in the shape of a record, hand-made and hot-iron-branded by Joe. 

The book chronicles 'Play Something Else Cowboy', an interactive artwork and program situated at a cowboy-themed cocktails bar that Joe and Chanelle built inside their house. Every Friday night, they left their comfort zones and invited fellow artists or contemporaries to join them for a conversation over drinks at the bar. Some people they knew, some they had never met before. The artwork was an intimate party: a space for work chat, personal narratives and recreational pastimes, a place for relief and critical reflection. Over the course of two years, more than 100 people participated in the project. No recordings or broadcasts of the participants' voices were made to preserve the free exchange of conversation: what remains is a series of anonymous redacted quotes, permanently etched onto cocktail glasses - and now, the books. 

When making this book, I also wanted to chronicle Joe and Chanelle's cowboy-like attitude to the art world, love, life and their practice. This book is a lot of everything: a love letter between artists and friends, and a dialogue between many different people. To reflect this, the layout changes from page to page. It's a serious art book, but it’s also often quite funny. It features words by many exceptional people and even has a recipe for fried chicken. The last image in this project shows Joe and Chanelle after their wedding ceremony, captured on their street, which, for many years, became almost a second home to me. 

Photography: Jake Terrey, Joe and Chanelle, and contributing guests