DONNA MARCUS: RADIATE. MIRRORING PRACTICE IN PUBLISHING
Radiate, the publication developed alongside Donna Marcus’s 20-year survey at HOTA, was never intended as a standard exhibition catalogue. It was not built to accompany an exhibition curatorial narrative. It was designed to present the artist’s practice over time, as a system, a record, and a continuation of method.
Marcus’s work operates with a formal clarity. It draws on seriality, symmetry, and repetition, but always through the lens of domestic material memory. Found aluminium objects. Mid-century kitchenware. Familiar forms recontextualised through volume and grouping. The work is both minimal and human. Cool in form. Warm in origin. The design of the publication had to express that tension without replicating its visual language.
Studio Starr’s role in this project was defined not by aesthetic contribution, but by structural support. There was no need for visual styling. The work’s materials already carried significant meaning. What was required was a framework that could respect the work’s internal logic and hold it at scale, without interruption, without excess.
The structure of the book was built through symmetry and restraint. The front and back covers mirror the same work in two different states, lit and unlit. The front and back endpapers reflect opposing gallery walls of the same show. A central spread features eight works from the same series, four on each page, to signal an axial midpoint. Symmetry here is not decoration. It is a system of sequencing.
This was a book of permanence, not an ephemeral document. The hard cover format was chosen to signal importance and to support the book’s longevity. A publication that holds two decades of practice must also carry the weight of permanence. Its production needed to support that.
The sequencing was developed in close collaboration with the artist. In this format, that level of involvement is not optional, it is essential. The weighting of bodies of work, the relationships between pieces, and the underlying rhythm of inclusion were shaped directly with Marcus. This is not a book designed about an artist. It is a work designed with them.
The designer’s role in this project was to remain fully present, but unintrusive. To bring to the process a live methodology about what a contemporary artist publication could be, and to align that with the artist’s practice. The idea is not to disappear, nor to decorate. It is to contribute, with precision, and to support the project in becoming the most complete version of itself.
Radiate is not a record of a moment. It is a contribution to an archive of practice. Created to reflect, support, and extend the artist’s method.
Marcus’s work operates with a formal clarity. It draws on seriality, symmetry, and repetition, but always through the lens of domestic material memory. Found aluminium objects. Mid-century kitchenware. Familiar forms recontextualised through volume and grouping. The work is both minimal and human. Cool in form. Warm in origin. The design of the publication had to express that tension without replicating its visual language.
Studio Starr’s role in this project was defined not by aesthetic contribution, but by structural support. There was no need for visual styling. The work’s materials already carried significant meaning. What was required was a framework that could respect the work’s internal logic and hold it at scale, without interruption, without excess.
The structure of the book was built through symmetry and restraint. The front and back covers mirror the same work in two different states, lit and unlit. The front and back endpapers reflect opposing gallery walls of the same show. A central spread features eight works from the same series, four on each page, to signal an axial midpoint. Symmetry here is not decoration. It is a system of sequencing.
This was a book of permanence, not an ephemeral document. The hard cover format was chosen to signal importance and to support the book’s longevity. A publication that holds two decades of practice must also carry the weight of permanence. Its production needed to support that.
The sequencing was developed in close collaboration with the artist. In this format, that level of involvement is not optional, it is essential. The weighting of bodies of work, the relationships between pieces, and the underlying rhythm of inclusion were shaped directly with Marcus. This is not a book designed about an artist. It is a work designed with them.
The designer’s role in this project was to remain fully present, but unintrusive. To bring to the process a live methodology about what a contemporary artist publication could be, and to align that with the artist’s practice. The idea is not to disappear, nor to decorate. It is to contribute, with precision, and to support the project in becoming the most complete version of itself.
Radiate is not a record of a moment. It is a contribution to an archive of practice. Created to reflect, support, and extend the artist’s method.
