GORDON HOUSE, African Tribal Sculpture, The Arcade Gallery, London, 1976

Exhibition catalogue produced for African Tribal Sculpture, presented at The Arcade Gallery, The Royal Arcade, 28 Old Bond Street, London, in Spring 1976. Designed by Gordon House. Twenty pages, staple-bound in cream illustrated wrappers, 21 × 20 cm. Twenty-six works illustrated.

A slim catalogue in cream wrappers, with a single carved figure isolated against a pale grey ground on the front cover. Inside, twenty-six sculptures are numbered and reproduced one or two to a spread, with little visual interruption beyond the objects themselves. Black-and-white reproductions throughout.

The catalogue was designed by Gordon House, the British artist and graphic designer closely connected with the visual culture of post-war London. House worked alongside Richard Hamilton on the production and design of the Beatles’ White Album and was responsible for the typography on the back cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Here, that restrained graphic language is applied to African sculpture: isolated object, number, photograph, sequence.

The catalogue encompasses a wide range of cultural and regional attributions, including Mangbetu, Ibibio, Mende, Baule, Senufo, Bambara, Bakongo, Bena Lulua, Zulu and Yoruba material. Its title, African Tribal Sculpture, belongs unmistakably to its period, when substantially different African objects were routinely brought together by the European art market beneath the broad category of “tribal art.” Later scholarship has increasingly foregrounded specific makers, peoples, regions and functions instead.

The publication also belongs to a longer programme at The Arcade Gallery. The gallery had presented African sculpture by 1975, returned to African Tribal Sculpture in 1978 with a catalogue introduction by David Attenborough, and in 1981 produced the substantially larger An Exhibition of Baule Sculptures, introduced by Peter and Monika Wengraf.

This 1976 catalogue survives as an early document within that programme: African sculpture passing through a Mayfair gallery, photographed as autonomous object and given form through Gordon House’s graphic language.

Condition: Good. Light rubbing, handling marks and edge wear to wrappers, minor creasing and age toning consistent with period and use. Internally well preserved.