ARTWORDS
Identity: print and digital

Working closely with the informed and discriminating Ben Hillwood-Harris, SecMoCo has developed a lasting identity for Artwords, perhaps THE go-to outlet in London for all print pertaining to contemporary visual culture. The work carried out includes brand application across various media including shop signage, advertisements, stationery, bags, publicity material, giftwrap and also book designs for Artwords Press (Documenta 11 by Matthew Arnatt and Matthew Collings; A Prague Night by Pavel Pepperstein).

The brand was further extended with the design of the Artwords website incorporating full e-commerce (www.artwords.co.uk).

Shopfront photograph: Coleen C. [ @yelpColleenC ]

GLAM: THE PERFORMANCE OF STYLE. TATE Liverpool

SecMoCo were delighted to be approached by the judicious Darren Pih (Curator, Tate Liverpool) with the offer of a dream job – to design the catalogue to accompany the exhibition GLAM: The Performance Of Style (at Tate Liverpool, UK and later Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany). Through an ambitious collection of works and artefacts, it’s drive was to conceptually locate the early 1970’s glam pop style phenomenon in the context of the high /low cultural interchange within the artistic milieu of the time.

The design of the catalogue was an attempt to convey this shrewd engagement with the period whilst resisting the (admittedly very tempting) urge to indulge in the use of glitter, kitsch and overtly ‘bad-taste’ fonts. To revert to such a swift design short-hand would have been to do a disservice both to the the complexity of the creative activity of the time, and this contemporary re-appraisal of it. The design also included a detailed illustrated timeline of the art, culture and politics of the time.

First Published September 2013 by Tate Publishing, UK. Edited by Darren Pih; 215 x 255 mm; 192pp, thread sewn; 4-colour images throughout; 4-colour, 8 page soft cover (inc flaps)

Context from the Tate website:
GLAM: The Performance Of Style is the first book to fully examine the serious cultural influence of one of the twentieth century’s most excessive and exciting pop movements. ‘Glam’ emerged in the early 1970s and remains one of the most instantly recognisable but critically derided stylistic phenomena of twentieth century art and cultural history. Known mostly through the music of the era… the style was also evident in other art forms through its acquaintance with theatrics, artifice, myth and androgyny.

Covering a range of subjects including fashion, music, film, gender in performance and postmodernism, the book moves beyond a nostalgic reception and will reveal the under-acknowledged exchange between avant-garde art and the extravagant style, tracing the glam sensibility to performance and installation art, and to painting and sculpture’.

Context from Noddy Holder (Slade), reviewing the exhibition for The Guardian 20.02.13:
‘You can see Marc Bolan’s leather hat in a glass case. I couldn’t believe how small it was: I knew he was a small man, but this hat is really tiny’.

PLANT SCIENCE
Forster & Heighes

Alan Read, the director of Performance Foundation, Kings College, invited Ewan Forster and Christopher Heighes to investigate the myriad buildings and spaces of the University. This intriguing and engaging duo together create – through a painstaking, determined process of enquiry – highly incisive and revealing performative responses to architectural sites, very often focusing on the overlooked or neglected areas and histories of the buildings, spaces and archives. SecMoCo were asked to design the logotype and publication to accompany the installation within the university exhibition rooms, entitled Plant Science: the disposal of 68 Half Moon Lane. This documented the ‘de-commissioning’ of one of the colleges’ sites in West London, taking the form, and using the language of, auction catalogues.

First edition published by Performance Foundation, London, UK; 24pp, 230 x 165mm; full colour throughout

Context from the Forster and Heighes website: ‘Plant Science is a meditation on the apparatus of study and learning; an exploration of the performative qualities of the lab bench and workstation as sites of intense scrutiny and discovery and devices for pedagogical exchange and experiment. Glasshouse, green-board, test bench, workstation, fume cupboard, propagation bed, specimen cabinet and fire door – a building distilled to its essential elements, clarified, separated and reconstituted in the neoclassical environment of Somerset House’.

PERFORMANCE FOUNDATION
Identity: print and digital

SecMoCo were appointed by the estimable and inspiring Alan Read (Professor of Theatre in the Department of English, School of Arts & Humanities, Kings College, London, UK) to develop the digital and print identity for the Performance Foundation, based in the Anatomy Theatre & Museum at Kings, on the Strand and the East Wing of Somerset House. As an organisation it seeks to to broker, via a process of creative arts, cultural interventions and practice-led processes, collaborative associations between academics, artists, artisans, architects and the interested public in the areas of performance techniques and technologies, and their operation.

performancefoundation.org.uk

AQUATOPIA
Tate/Nottingham Contemporary

This publication accompanied the exhibition of the same name at Nottingham Contemporary and Tate St Ives. Working closely with Alex Farquarson (Director, Nottingham Contemporary) and Martin Clarke (Artistic Director, Tate St Ives) it was felt that the publication should be designed to function more as a ‘reader’ or compendium of textual and visual sources than a conventional exhibition catalogue. As such it includes a huge range of work from a diverse selection of contemporary and classic artists and writers.

First edition published by Tate, London, UK, 2013. Edited, and with a foreword/introduction by Martin Clarke and Alex Farquarson. Texts: Philip Hoare and Marina Warner; additional texts: various; 198 x 129 mm. 240pp; 4-colour images throughout; paperback, flapped cover

From the press release: ‘It occupies 72 per cent of the surface of our planet, yet the depths of our oceans are less known to us than the Solar System. The publication is a cross-disciplinary exploration of the aquatic imaginary, encompassing literature, maritime and cultural history, psychoanalysis, post-colonial and feminist theory, and including work from a diverse selection of artists and writers, both contemporary and classic masters.