CURATORIAL STATEMENT

Design24 embraces the parallels between art and design/ designer and artist; paying respect to the duality of commercial design work, its artists and culture.

DESIGN24:

The importance undertaken by Design24 reflects the candidacy of Graphic
Design and illustration as art forms back into the fine art market.
While the formal short definition of graphic design embraces the process as a profession which combines the use of text and graphics in the conveyance of an effective message as a visual language- the process originates as an artistic practise.

While Graphic Design as a discipline has a relatively recent history - the term 'graphic
design' first coined by William Addison Dwiggins in 1922 - in late 19th century Europe the
movement began to separate graphic design from fine art. The explosion of visual communication in the 20th and 21st centuries depicts a blurring distinction and over-lapping of advertising art, graphic design and fine art as a result of shared elements, theories, principles, practices and languages.

In graphic design, "the essence is to give order to information, form to ideas, expression and
feeling to artifacts that document human experience."
* A valid statement, although interpretations
and the modern popular recognition of graphic design may argue it’s primary
function as a marketing application - both visual and psychological considerations
argue differently in the works of artists such as Andy Warhol, Patrick McNeil and Patrick
Miller (FAILE) and Shepard Fairey to name just a few.

From the internationally recognised and represented work of artist/ illustrator Ben Tour
(Black Market Gallery, LA) to the locally celebrated screen printed, collage installations of
Office Supplies Incorporated (Vancouver Art Gallery), Design24 enlists the works of 24 of
the west coast’s independent designers and illustrators in the recognition of graphic design
culture and its contributors.

Exhibited as an art form both intellectual and aesthetic in the production and presentation
of the work, this series is screen printed by hand on 250g/square inch, 10ml thick ink jet
archival paper, signed and numbered (10 of 10) as a limited edition collection, presented by
Gallery Fukai and the exhibitions co-curators Neal Nolan, Sascha Yamashita and Andrew
Young.

-Neal Nolan.
Co-curator, Design24.

* Meggs, Philip B., 'A history of graphic design'. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1983