‘As a journey into a studio’s archives, this book is a narrative. An inventory of a collection, it could be called a museum catalogue. It can also serve as a guide to the work whose history it relates here.’ (Joëlle Tuerlinckx, 2024)
This artist’s book, ‘inventory-catalogue of a museum by itself’, chronicles the development of a work of art by Joëlle Tuerlinckx – a museum as monument, commissioned for a former coalfield. Without walls, the museum places the memory in the air, and expands to the universal.
The book has all the characteristics of a classic art catalog: a generous format, with works presented frontally, removed from their context, printed in colour on coated paper. This idea of classicism is inspiring and guides the design, but it is also radically disrupted. For example, the book is entirely set in the Courier typeface and introduced by an absent text, represented by abstract lines.
