Catalogue
Catalogue History Is Now: 7 Artists Take On Britain
In History Is Now, seven artists curated works to comment on six separate historical periods in 20th-century British history, bringing together paintings, sculptures, film, photography and an array of objects – from a giant lump of coal from Britain’s last working mine, to a surface-to-air missile.
Our aim in putting together the book was to create that Holy Grail of publications: the exhibition catalogue that audiences would read.
Instead of commissioning a few long essays, we chose to invite a number of writers to respond to the work in each section in as broad a way as they wanted. We split our original budget, commissioning shorter pieces than we were used to. The content we got back was as diverse as the works and objects in the show.
The art historian David Alan Mellor gave us a highly engaging response to Richard Wentworth’s selection, focusing on the ways in which wartime technology influenced the domestic sphere of the 1950s and 1960s.
Architecture historian Adrian Forty discussed brutalism in relation to Jane and Louise Wilson’s reflection on protest movements, Northern Ireland and the relationship between the body and space. Jackie Kay gave us a beautiful poem to riff on the artist films selected by John Akomfrah.
Journalist Charlotte Higgins created a fascinating personal history of the BBC in response to Hannah Starkey’s selections of photographs exploring the representation of women in the media and in art.
And also, economist Daniel Fujiwara discussed his work on “happy economics”, a concept that inspired the most contemporary section of the exhibition, curated by his brother Simon. We complemented these texts with the voices of the artist-curators themselves.
Our great design challenge was always going to be creating something cohesive from such a vast array of works and texts. We selected the young design studio Julia to take on this challenge.
Julia’s answer to the brief was both thoughtful and creative. It responded to the texts by giving the whole book an editorial feel, with pull quotes and texts laid out in such a way that the reader could dip in, rather than feel put off by slabs of turgid art prose.
For the typography, it used Granby, a font that later developed into Johnston, used on the London Underground.
This was complemented by that most-classic of British fonts, Times, which developed throughout the book, starting with the original cut and going through five different developments, from the famous Times New Roman to a new cut – Times Julia – developed just for this book.
So far this approach appears to have been a success. The immediate difference I noticed was that people were stopping me in the office and talking to me about what they’d read, as well as what they’d seen in the book.
The experience of History Is Now has pushed us to be more creative in our commissioning and for our upcoming Carsten Höller: Decision publication we have asked six fiction writers, including Ali Smith and Helen Oyeyemi, to write new short stories based on the theme of the exhibition. The results promise to be thrilling.
Ben Fergusson is the art publisher at the Southbank Centre, London. History is Now is at the Hayward Gallery, London, until 26 April.
Our aim in putting together the book was to create that Holy Grail of publications: the exhibition catalogue that audiences would read.
Instead of commissioning a few long essays, we chose to invite a number of writers to respond to the work in each section in as broad a way as they wanted. We split our original budget, commissioning shorter pieces than we were used to. The content we got back was as diverse as the works and objects in the show.
The art historian David Alan Mellor gave us a highly engaging response to Richard Wentworth’s selection, focusing on the ways in which wartime technology influenced the domestic sphere of the 1950s and 1960s.
Architecture historian Adrian Forty discussed brutalism in relation to Jane and Louise Wilson’s reflection on protest movements, Northern Ireland and the relationship between the body and space. Jackie Kay gave us a beautiful poem to riff on the artist films selected by John Akomfrah.
Journalist Charlotte Higgins created a fascinating personal history of the BBC in response to Hannah Starkey’s selections of photographs exploring the representation of women in the media and in art.
And also, economist Daniel Fujiwara discussed his work on “happy economics”, a concept that inspired the most contemporary section of the exhibition, curated by his brother Simon. We complemented these texts with the voices of the artist-curators themselves.
Our great design challenge was always going to be creating something cohesive from such a vast array of works and texts. We selected the young design studio Julia to take on this challenge.
Julia’s answer to the brief was both thoughtful and creative. It responded to the texts by giving the whole book an editorial feel, with pull quotes and texts laid out in such a way that the reader could dip in, rather than feel put off by slabs of turgid art prose.
For the typography, it used Granby, a font that later developed into Johnston, used on the London Underground.
This was complemented by that most-classic of British fonts, Times, which developed throughout the book, starting with the original cut and going through five different developments, from the famous Times New Roman to a new cut – Times Julia – developed just for this book.
So far this approach appears to have been a success. The immediate difference I noticed was that people were stopping me in the office and talking to me about what they’d read, as well as what they’d seen in the book.
The experience of History Is Now has pushed us to be more creative in our commissioning and for our upcoming Carsten Höller: Decision publication we have asked six fiction writers, including Ali Smith and Helen Oyeyemi, to write new short stories based on the theme of the exhibition. The results promise to be thrilling.
Ben Fergusson is the art publisher at the Southbank Centre, London. History is Now is at the Hayward Gallery, London, until 26 April.