Artists I Steal From was an exhibition curated by Alvaro Barrington and Dame Julia Peyton Jones at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in summer 2019. It brought together works by 49 artists, some of whom had never before been shown in the UK, but all of whom had, to some extent, directly influenced the way Alvaro Barrington creates, thinks and sees, and all have perfected techniques or solutions that he has been inspired to ‘steal’.
The artists featured in the show were all important artists, both living and dead, and the layout and quality of the book had to reflect this. However, the book is documenting a group and not an individual so no work or artist was more important or relevant than any other.
The biggest challenge was time. Time was not on our side. The final list of works would not be known until a short time before the show, nor would the works themselves be available to visually check against the proofs until days before the opening.
To aid the creation of the book we developed a ‘scaffolding’ whereby each artist’s page had the same elements of picture, biography and a 200 word piece by Alvaro explaining the context of his ‘theft’.
The final result was a beautiful little gem of a book, easy to read and a tribute to the team at the gallery that moved Heaven and earth to get the book out on time.
