We are excited to announce that Slimvolume has very recently published Public Art. It’s a superb, beautifully produced ‘artist’s book’ by the rebellious British graphic artist, Scott King (including some collaboration with illustrator, Will Henry).
Although King regards his works as ‘parables’, Public Art is also most certainly an art-world-gone-mad satire of sorts, made with a pervasive tongue-in-cheek smirk. Through a sophisticated crafting of typography and image, he subjects the particular neo-liberal ‘public art’ ideology to a timely (and often hilarious) critique.
“For some time I’d been making work about the nature of public sculpture – how it is deployed by ‘big business’ on company HQ plazas, or used in the hope of regenerating particular areas. This led me to the idea of ‘sculptural transplants’.” — Scott King
The Saatchi Gallery online so eloquently describes his work: “Scott King’s artworks are infused with a cunning media savviness that deftly navigates between product, messaging, and desire. […] Emblazoned in acid-house pink, left-wing radicalism becomes fused with celebrity obsession, a contemporary by-product of cultural dysmorphia. Nostalgic of the politicised youth of Thatcher’s Britain, now recaptured and packaged as fashion, King posits contemporary insurgency as homogenised consumer choice.”
King is formerly Art Director of i-D and Creative Director of Sleazenation magazines. In recent years he’s exhibited his own work in major international museums including, The Barbican (London), PS1 (New York), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Hamburger Hanhof (Berlin), Museum of Modern Art (Moscow), and Zona Maco México Arte Contemporaneo (Mexico City).
We also have these two superb Scott King books, published by JRP|Ringier: