Catalogue: Ryan Gander Culturefield

Ryan Gander’s new publication Culturefield is big – big enough to contain Gander’s prolific and varied output of artworks realised over the past 10 years.

Gander’s multidisciplinary process is revealed by looking through the pages, which include almost 300 works and projects selected by the artist. His practice ranges from painting, sculpture, photography and film to advertising campaigns and cocktails to frosted porn magazine covers and Adidas trainers.

The scale of Culturefield also plays on the tradition of a coffee table book, which may sometimes go unread but is strategically positioned to inspire conversation.

Dream revelation

Culturefield is the catalogue to accompany Gander’s exhibition Make Every Show Like It’s Your Last, at Manchester Art Gallery until 14 September, which then goes to CCA Derry (4 October–22 November).

At the heart of the publication and the exhibition lie the possibilities presented by the imagination. Culturefield features essays written by the directors of the institutions that are part of the show’s tour, including Maria Balshaw, the director of Manchester City Galleries and the Whitworth Art Gallery.

Gander’s wife Rebecca May Marston and art critic Jonathan P Watts have also contributed articles.

The catalogue starts with an image of the work Porthole to Culturefield Revisited 2010. For Gander, Culturefield refers to an imaginary state where you can find the perfect conditions for creativity.

He was introduced to this concept in a dream: it was located at the bottom of his primary school playing field. You climb over a fence, through a little wooded area then cross a stream.

You arrive in a meadow full of interesting people to talk to, the radio is playing and there’s never a bad song on it. Gander suggests the value of keeping a place like Culturefield in mind as a source of creative energy, even though it may be forever out of reach.

Poetic conceptualism

Much of Gander’s art contains snippets of stories, some biographical and some art historical. As such his work is a kind of “poetic conceptualism”. For example, his series of sculptures (I is... (IV), I is... (V) and I is... (VI)) of the simple dens made at home by his young daughter have been reproduced in marble.

Gander playfully imitates the carved drapery of classical sculpture and transforms the fleeting moments in a child’s creative play into permanent monuments to the imagination.

Culturefield joins an impressive library of books by Gander that blur the edges between an exhibition catalogue and a work of art, including the second edition of his children’s book The Boy Who Always Looked Up and Artists’ Cocktails.

Gander applies the same creative approach and work ethic to book production as he does with exhibition making.

Like the title of his show, Gander reminds us to “make every book like it’s your last”.

Kate Jesson is a curator at Manchester Art Gallery