CINDY SHERMAN — Possession, City Art Galleries, Manchester, 1994

City Art Galleries, Princess Street, Manchester, 1994. Original exhibition poster, offset lithograph, approx. 43 × 60 cm. 17 September – 6 November 1994.

The poster reproduces Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #96, 1981, one of the key images from her Centerfolds series. Originally made in relation to the visual language of magazine spreads, the image turns the format of the centre-fold away from display and towards ambiguity. Sherman appears as a figure already mediated: staged, vulnerable, artificial, cinematic, and withheld.

In this poster, the image is placed under another title: Possession. The word shifts the work again. What was once a photograph becomes exhibition identity, public advertisement, institutional surface, and collectible document. The image is possessed by the artist, by the role she performs, by the magazine format it addresses, by the Manchester exhibition, and finally by the poster itself.

Within The New Rare, this object sits close to the logic of reclassification. It is not simply a reproduction of a Cindy Sherman work, but a secondary support through which the work travelled. The poster records how an image moves from artwork to publicity, from publicity to archive, from archive to object.

Condition is central to this example. The visible creasing, fold marks, surface scuffing, handling wear, and light edge wear are not treated here as separate from the object’s meaning. They mark its movement through display, storage, handling, and exchange. The surface carries the evidence of circulation: a public image becoming a handled object.

A strong example of exhibition ephemera as transferred authorship: Sherman’s constructed image re-entering circulation through the language of display, promotion, and possession.

Condition: Good vintage condition with visible creasing, fold marks, surface scuffing, handling wear, and light edge wear throughout. These marks remain part of the record of the object’s circulation.