Going to press…
It was always clear, when we began planning our major exhibition on The Classical Now, that a book would be required to accompany the show. What’s important about a publication like this is that it gives the exhibition a longer legacy – not least among critics, artists and students.
The challenge we faced was the quick turn-around: to have a book ready by late February 2018, everything would have to be planned and confirmed by summer 2017. By that stage we had not yet even confirmed all of the works in the show. It was clear that a traditional ‘catalogue’ would be impractical. And in any case we wanted to achieve something rather more daring and discursive – to enact, through the volume, the idea of dialogue that stands at the heart of our project.
We’re really proud of the book that’s resulted. A foremost aim was to make the volume visually stunning – the reason why we opted for our wonderful partner, Elephant Publishing: the publishing team, working with our hugely talented designer (Joe Hales), has produced a volume that communicates the idea of dialogue through the very form of the book’s visual juxtapositions. We’ve also combined short academic essays with artist interviews, working with some of the key artists we’re exhibiting in the show (the late Edward Allington, Léo Caillard, Damien Hirst, Alex Israel, Marc Quinn, Mary Reid Kelley and Rachel Whiteread).
The book finally went to press in January. It will be available to purchase during the run of the exhibition, and you can pre-order your copy through the Elephant website. We’ll write more about the book when the official publication date arrives – 27 February 2018!
