Published March 2026.
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Simon Patterson: Out of Order is the catalogue of an exhibition at Wolfson College, Cambridge.
Simon Patterson is one of the foremost contemporary artists using text and graphical systems. He came to prominence in the seminal Freeze exhibition of 1988 and was short-listed for the Turner Prize in 1996. This catalogue of Patterson’s 2022-23 exhibition in Wolfson College, Cambridge, reviews the earlier literature on his oeuvre and offers an extensive and detailed reinterpretation of Patterson’s name-paintings and of his graphical works, contextualising them and relating them to historical precedents.
Lindley first analyses the form and function of the deceptively simple name-paintings, works which Patterson has produced throughout his career in a variety of different formats, as single works, diptychs, triptychs and groups. The question whether they are portraits is discussed and their semantic slipperiness is examined. The second part of the catalogue considers Patterson’s appropriation, quirky disruptions and repurposing of well-known graphical systems, including the London Underground diagram, the periodic table of the elements and nineteenth-century Admiralty maps. It is shown that Patterson deliberately curates incongruity and discordances. He disrupts existing classificatory systems and visual schemata, reconstructing them as conceptual works of art. Patterson’s disordering of his source materials is perhaps an appropriate metaphor for a world which is itself ‘out of order’.
ISBN 978-1-9993285-9-7
Soft cover, 80 pages, 34 colour illustrations, introduction and catalogue text by Phillip Lindley.
Simon Patterson: Out of Order is available direct from the author for £25 (includes UK postage). Please use the contact form below to order or enquire:
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