Catalogue

The title of the exhibition and book derives from the Cambridge- born artist’s work An Exhibition for Modern Living, which he created for the British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet in 2011
 at London’s Southbank Centre. This in turn was inspired by a landmark exhibition of the same name at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1949.

The 1949 show was designed by a leading figure of postwar American design, Alexander Girard, and featured site-specific installations by designers such as Alvaar Aalto, Alexander Calder and Charles and Ray Eames.

The show brought together the best modern design with objects ranging from furniture, cutlery and appliances to toys, and demonstrated how domestic items could be designed with artistic intelligence.

At Manchester Art Gallery, Darbyshire presents a contemporary equivalent, reminiscent in format of the original exhibition – illustrator Adam Gale has created a mural in the style of Saul Steinberg’s 1949 cityscape and Darbyshire has installed 10 of his “environments” in a grid-like formation.

An Exhibition for Modern Living is claustrophobic, packed with objects typical of contemporary homeware stores, from kitsch, flock-covered Buddhas to union jack cushions and rip-offs of iconic design pieces such as Arne Jacobsen’s Egg chair. In Oak Effect, Darbyshire displays original wooden objects in a room made from contemporary pieces of flatpack laminate furniture.

The publication also draws on the design and format of the 1949 exhibition catalogue. In place of Girard’s text, writer and critic Tom Morton interviews Darbyshire about his work,
and in place of Steinberg’s New Yorker-style illustrations, Gale has produced a fold-out cityscape depicting architecture relevant to Darbyshire’s practice over
the past decade, with cut-out cross-sections that reveal his sculptures and installations.

Ten writers have contributed prose and critical writing about the works in the exhibition.
The original book presented photographic reproductions of selected objects in categories – glass, ceramic, textile, toys, lamps, chairs – but Darbyshire has categorised his photographs based on the aesthetic properties of the objects rather than the materials.

So Zaha Hadid plastic moulded sandals sit alongside a sculpture sold by BHS and an image of a marble Doryphoros is grouped with a wooden Venus de Milo spatula.
Using industrial prototyping and 3D printing, Darbyshire creates layers of hand-cut, multicoloured polycarbonate that are assembled into sculptural works ranging from consumer objects to classical figures.

In the catalogue, Darbyshire explains the symbolism attached to these sculptures and installations. Darbyshire examines the language of design and sculpture, and our relationship to lived environments, through his works.

He encourages us to question the political and economic agendas that inform our taste and value judgments. His works explore the concept of collecting, not only in terms of an institutional critique, but also in the way we amass objects and what they say about us.

Fiona Corridan is the curator of contemporary art at Manchester Art Gallery. An Exhibition for Modern Living is at Manchester Art Gallery until 10 January 2016

£20; published by Manchester
Art Gallery
Distributed by Cornerhouse Publishing ISBN 978-0-901673-89-3