The Journey of Things by Magdalene Odundo is published alongside the exhibition of the same name presented at The Hepworth Wakefield in Spring 2019. The book features 44 of Odundo’s vessels alongside a large selection of historic and contemporary objects that reveal the wide range of global references that have informed her practice. The book object comprises a series of interleaved sections presenting an organic flow of content which pairs and juxtaposes the historic and the contemporary, featuring works by Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Lucie Rie, Jean Arp, as well as ancient vessels from Greece and Egypt, historic ceramics from Africa, Asia and Central America, and ritual objects from across the African continent.
A key aspect of InOtherWords publications is to experiment with the conceptual, formal and structural potential of the book. Here we question and challenge the status and role of the art catalogue through the exploration of a series of dichotomies – past/present, hard/soft, ephemeral/permanent with the intention of creating a mood which is both contemporary and classical. Rather than acting as a reference to the exhibition, the book is a specific artifact, an equally important space for the presentation of the content and ideas.
