Although I’ve mentioned this on Twitter and Instagram it’s about time I mentioned my new book Big Art / Small Art due to be published next week on the 8th September.
As you can see from the photos it’s a handsome looking volume with a beautiful card bound spine, embossed cover and different textured paper sections on the printed pages. The curation, text and general art direction as per usual is my role, alongside the great team at Thames and Hudson for direction, editing, production and fantastic design work by Therese Vandling.
First and foremost though it’s about the art inside the book and the artist’s who trusted me to present their work in this context that counts. As the title suggests the book is about how artist’s use and play with scale to create art that is engaging and experiential – divided into two chapters – Big Art & Small Art.
The idea for this book has been brewing for a while as I’ve been contemplating a series of books that look at the fundamental elements of art as a way of looking at contemporary practice. In my preceding book Raw + Material = Art: Found, Scavenged and Upcycled, the focus was on materials, in particular those artists who were using low-cost and low-tech media in exciting and creative ways.
While I was investigating materials it got me thinking similarly about scale as another fundamental factor in art and how artists today are pushing the boundaries with their approaches to both media and dimension. Materials are a basic consideration in the creation of an artwork, as are scale and proportion.
There is perhaps some subconscious overlap in both books as my attraction to unusual materials and original techniques follows through into this new Big Art / Small Art book.
Because of the far-reaching subject matter of the book it’s made it possible to feature art that is wildly different but similarly inspiring; from the vast clouds of fog used by Fujiko Nakaya, to towers of ice built by Brent Christensen or constructions of thousands of bamboo poles created by Doug and Mike Starn alongside the intricate book carvings of Guy Laramée or Lorenzo M. Durán’s painstakingly cut leaf silhouettes.
I’ve tried to limit my images here so as not to give too much of the book away! Above images include work by Nguyen Hung Cuong, Janet Echelman, Jason DeCaires Taylor, Diem Chau, Katharina Grosse and Jean-Francois Fourtou…
The full artist line-up include 44 artists – many thanks for everyone who was involved and look out for up-coming press which includes the The Guardian website..
Support your local bookshop – http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/tristan+manco/big+art+_+small+art/10493382/