The Serving Library: Concentric Process

Tate Liverpool’s interim Head of Exhibitions and Displays, Tamsin Dillon, gives her take on the ‘concentric process’ of The Serving Library’s commissioned cultural bulletins…

An airbrush portrait of Wyndham Lewis by Chris Evans; a photograph of an upside-down sketch for the London Underground map by Harry Beck; the logos for MIT Press by Muriel Cooper and the band Black Flag by Raymond Pettibon. A random sample from nearly 100 pieces on display in the The Serving Library (TSL), these items began life as illustrations either within one of the Bulletins of The Serving Library or its predecessor Dot Dot Dot (DDD).

TSL’s founders – Stuart Bailey, David Reinfurt and Angie Keefer – commission cultural thinkers, artists, curators and designers to write about subjects including research, art, design and the wide range of influences therein. Publishing the results (bulletins) online and in themed journals, the texts and their related illustrations suggest new thinking on a range of cultural areas and histories, offering fresh perspectives on publishing, the role of the archive and of the library.

Delving into the collection via several connected routes among myriad layers of images, texts and references, you might begin with Beck’s Underground map, then read Paul Elliman’s related article in DDD8. Or discover Mark Owens’s essay Graphics Incognito (DDD12), about the heritage of graphic design, in which Owens recounts the importance of designer Muriel Cooper and her English language edition of Hans M. Wingler’s graphic design ‘bible’ The Bauhaus (MIT Press 1969). He also points out the remarkable formal resemblance between Cooper’s logo design for MIT and the abstract, De Stijl-tinged, design created by Raymond Pettibon for his brother’s influential punk band Black Flag. On the gallery wall we see the two works recreated and can reflect directly on the similarity for ourselves.

New essays produced during the exhibition (to be ‘performed’ by an animated asterisk in the gallery) will reflect and draw upon the context of publication and mass-distribution at the heart of the Making Things Public season, with particular reference to Transmitting Andy Warhol on the fourth floor. These new texts, and their associated illustrations, will become the next stage in the life of TSL: a new set of bulletins and additions to the collection; while its publication will perform the role of pseudo-catalogue for the season.

TSL transforms the Wolfson Gallery into a site of cultural production and activity as well as one of research and contemplation: their residency includes a series of talks given by a range of academics, writers and speakers, providing further routes to consider the work in the show and ways to relate it to personal, subjective experiences. In addition the space itself will be animated through other, participatory events, hosting meetings, classes and seminars.

This concentric process means TSL produces an ever-expanding collection for presentation, related essays for reference and the instigation of further texts and illustrations. This first opportunity to see the collection of The Serving Library in the UK will be a naturally dynamic and evolving one; allowing for as broad or as focussed an experience as each viewer desires.

Tamsin Dillon Head of Exhibitions and Displays (Interim)

This essay is taken from Tate Liverpool’s new seasonal publication Compass. Available for £1, exclusively at Tate Liverpool, it features articles exploring the exhibitions on each floor of the gallery. Find out more information about the latest issue of Compass here 

See The Serving Library at Tate Liverpool until 8 February 2015, free entry

Read Maisie Ridgway’s Artefacts, Anarchy & Evolution: Exploring The Serving Library

Read C. James Fagan’s The Skewed Mirror of Gretchen Bender

Images: main: Chris Evans, ‘Berlin Key Mangled’, Airbrush painting; originally made to illustrate bulletin ‘How to do Words with Things’ by Bruno Latour in Bulletins of The Serving Library 3, 2012. Centre: Stuart Bailey and Chris Evans, ‘A Mouse About to Enter the Public Domain’, Airbrush painting, 2005; originally made for the back cover of Dot Dot Dot 15, 2005. Both courtesy The Serving Library