Catalogue
The British Art Show 8
The British Art Show is a large exhibition that showcases the best contemporary art being produced in the UK today. The show, which takes place every five years, fills multiple venues and tours a number of British cities. It opened in Leeds in October.
Uniquely for Hayward Publishing, we have a series of catalogues stretching back to the 1980s. What is wonderful about these – each created by a different publishing team, with a new set of curators, writers and designers – is that together they tell a story about British design and exhibition publishing over the past decades.
This year’s show raised a number of complications: many of the works are new commissions and were unfinished when we started putting the book together; the number of artists – 42 – meant that we had to fit a lot of work into limited space; and the differing nature of the artworks meant that certain works were less conducive to representing in print than others. But these challenges also opened up possibilities.
Because the book sets out to represent a specific moment in art history, we were able to abandon any attempt to make a “classic” catalogue. Against all our normal reservations, we tried to create something that would feel dated in five years’ time. Looking back at the previous British Art Show catalogues, we realised that those that felt “very 1985” or “very 2005” stood the test of time best.
We worked with Fraser Muggeridge studio, which embraced the brief fully. With such a wealth of new material, we wanted to create something that showcased the work visually, while keeping to a modest budget.
We abandoned the smallness of previous iterations and went for a lower page count with bigger pages – just over A4 in size – to create voluminous spreads to present the artworks. Instead of paying for expensive finishings, we made clever use of just one element to give the book it’s visual punch: a textured metallic paper for the cover that creates a surface as tactile as it is visual.
Our approach to text has been influenced by the digital age. While the encyclopaedic printed monograph still has its place, it is no longer necessary for the British Art Show 8 to repeat artist information that is available online. Instead, we focused on bringing the artists’ voices into the catalogue through two round-table discussions – on production and art’s relationship with society – and through their own texts on creating the works.
It has resulted in a reading experience that encourages browsing, while – with the curator essays – retaining the depth of content expected of a catalogue of this nature.
Ben Fergusson is the art publisher at Hayward Publishing
Uniquely for Hayward Publishing, we have a series of catalogues stretching back to the 1980s. What is wonderful about these – each created by a different publishing team, with a new set of curators, writers and designers – is that together they tell a story about British design and exhibition publishing over the past decades.
This year’s show raised a number of complications: many of the works are new commissions and were unfinished when we started putting the book together; the number of artists – 42 – meant that we had to fit a lot of work into limited space; and the differing nature of the artworks meant that certain works were less conducive to representing in print than others. But these challenges also opened up possibilities.
Because the book sets out to represent a specific moment in art history, we were able to abandon any attempt to make a “classic” catalogue. Against all our normal reservations, we tried to create something that would feel dated in five years’ time. Looking back at the previous British Art Show catalogues, we realised that those that felt “very 1985” or “very 2005” stood the test of time best.
We worked with Fraser Muggeridge studio, which embraced the brief fully. With such a wealth of new material, we wanted to create something that showcased the work visually, while keeping to a modest budget.
We abandoned the smallness of previous iterations and went for a lower page count with bigger pages – just over A4 in size – to create voluminous spreads to present the artworks. Instead of paying for expensive finishings, we made clever use of just one element to give the book it’s visual punch: a textured metallic paper for the cover that creates a surface as tactile as it is visual.
Our approach to text has been influenced by the digital age. While the encyclopaedic printed monograph still has its place, it is no longer necessary for the British Art Show 8 to repeat artist information that is available online. Instead, we focused on bringing the artists’ voices into the catalogue through two round-table discussions – on production and art’s relationship with society – and through their own texts on creating the works.
It has resulted in a reading experience that encourages browsing, while – with the curator essays – retaining the depth of content expected of a catalogue of this nature.
Ben Fergusson is the art publisher at Hayward Publishing