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[overcoming the thereness of things] 


from April 2020


Britt Al-Busultan
Krishna Balakrishnan
Kathryn Graham
Paul Henderson
Richard Ayodeji Ikhide
India Nielsen
geetha thurairajah
Xiuching Tsay


[overcoming the thereness of things] is a group exhibition that documents the current times and uncertainties through the experiences of artists working during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a time when galleries, museums and exhibitions are temporarily closed, how can artists and artwork be exhibited? How can shows happen outside of the institution? This Book as Exhibition’s project asks 8 artists across UK, Canada, Thailand and Finland to imagine a PA4-sized book as an exhibition space. Each artist will take over a week to fill 16 pages and then send it off to the next artists. This book as exhibition project allows for exhibition making but also and importantly the creation of new work and documentation of the artist’s time. This project relies heavily on the postal service, which as of 8th April 2020 is still working in UK, Canada and Thailand, albeit slower. This website acts as further dissemination of the project to wider audience and allows for the project team to digitally view the work as individual artists create them.

[overcoming the thereness of things] is curated by Krishna Balakrishnan.








Liz Johnson Artur – If you know the beginning, the end is no trouble


This exhibition as book was conceptualized, illustrate and designed by Krishna Balakrishnan.

This Book as Exhibition translates the narrative structure of Liz Johnson Artur: If you know the beginning, the end is no trouble at the South London
Gallery from the 13th June to 1st September 2019.

For her first solo show in the UK, Russian-Ghanaia artist Liz Johnson Artur presented new sculptural works incorporating photographs selected from her substantial archive of images documenting the lives of people from African diaspora.

The exhibition focused on London, where Artur has lived since 1991, capturing the richness an complexity of Black British life. In the Main Gallery, four hanging and floor-based bamboo cane structures hosted a body of images taken across the city, including in Peckham Rye, at black-majority churches and at non-binary club nights. One section focused
on still life images taken in the artist’s London studio, which is home to a wealth of reference books, vinyl records and magazines.

In this book, the sculptural structure is nowhere to be seen except in the first illustration. The bamboo structure become the chapters of this book, whereby the four structures are transformed into four sections of the book.

This book is typeset in Aktiv Grotesk Ex XBold by Dalton Maag.

First Edition
10
August 2019, London U.K.