Barbican Art Gallery Bedwyr Williams: The Gulch

This illustrated publication accompanies Bedwyr Williams’s solo exhibition in the Barbican’s Curve gallery.

For this new Curve commission, Williams sends visitors on a quest through the 90-metre long space, navigating a sequence of theatrically staged environments. From the absurd and extraordinary to the mind-numbingly mundane, Williams draws on the banalities and idiosyncrasies of his own life and the world around him. Taking the vertiginous ravine-like form of the Curve as his starting point and title, the artist transforms the gallery into a series of immersive stage sets conceived to transport and disorient. This volume charts the visitor’s voyage through the installation, from an alluring moonlit beach scene into the unknown.

Alongside installation views and images of past works, an interview with the artist by curator Lotte Johnson explores the ideas that shaped this exhibition and a fictional text by author Sally O’Reilly delves into the mind of the talking goat within the installation.

This is the fourth title in a publication series by Barbican Art Gallery that focuses on the Curve exhibition programme.

Over 20 colour illustrations
Hardback, 48 pages
Dimensions: 24cm x 17cm 

Cover image: Installation backdrop, Bedwyr Williams: The Gulch, 2016 (detail). The Curve, Barbican Centre, London. Photo: Max Colson.