Louise Bourgeois — Autobiographical Prints, Hayward Publishing, London, 2016

Softcover exhibition catalogue. Hayward Publishing / Hayward Touring, London, 2016. 96 pp., illustrated throughout. Approx. 16 × 24 cm ISBN: 978-1-85332-343-0 .

Condition: good; light shelf wear, minor rubbing to covers and edges, soft corner wear, faint handling marks. Interior clean and well-preserved.

Catalogue published by Hayward for the touring exhibition Louise Bourgeois Prints: Autobiographical Series and Set of 11 Drypoints. The publication gathers two late print series: Autobiographical Series from 1994 and 11 Drypoints from 1999, with texts by Roger Malbert and Juliet Mitchell.

The prints belong to Bourgeois’s late return to printmaking, a medium she used for repetition, revision and states of change. The exhibition brought together twenty-five prints, with recurring motifs including womb-like forms, ladders, feet, clocks, scissors, bathtubs and the pregnant mosquito.

A catalogue, but also a compact institutional carrier for works that were themselves built through pressure, incision and return. The private image becomes plate; the plate becomes edition; the edition becomes touring exhibition; the touring exhibition becomes book. Childhood, body, memory and repair are held here in the format of a modest paperback.

The cover image is especially direct: Bourgeois’s mosquito as emblem, red line against a dark institutional field. Inside, the sequence is spare and quiet, giving each print space to operate almost as a page-object rather than illustration.