The Importance of a Catalogue

So you have attended an exhibition, it has ended, done and gone. Yet you still ache for just one more glance, one more visit. In my last post, I said to revisit shows as many times as you like; what happens when the show concludes? How do we go back when something has left us behind? 

Well, for starters, a show has not truly left us behind if we are still thinking about it days or weeks after it. It still exists in our mind's eye, in our camera roll, and in conversations with friends. In this case, you want more, more writing, more looking, more revisiting art. That is when an exhibition catalogue can be useful to you. Exhibition catalogues are sold by the art gallery showcasing the works, and the museum's gift shops. The library can even carry copies of the more famous shows, and some catalogues can get memorialized on the Internet Archive. Information you can get from an exhibition catalogue relating to an artwork is: artist name, name of the work, image of the work, dimensions, a little blurb about the piece and how it relates back to the exhibition’s theme. 

Exhibition catalogues, are they useful? 

Exhibition catalogues are a great resource to study for students, but they are just as valuable to those who are not students of art. Through an exhibition catalogue, one can practice looking.

Let’s go back to what I taught you in the last blog post, about looking at art. Now that the exhibition has come and gone, that does not mean we stop looking. Through the “MY VIEW, YOUR?” exhibition catalogue, we can take another look at the show’s work. Within the catalogue, it details all the artworks by showcasing artists.

I am taken by one particular piece and wish to look at it more. 

The practice of looking at art again. 

Shamika Pierre’s Dream House (2024) remains the most striking to me. There, a faceless man mows the lawn while staring at the house across the street. The work is vibrant with colours: greens, whites, blues, and reds. The artist uses different materials such as ink, watercolour, coloured pencil and acrylic to achieve this hazy dream-like quality, almost like a fading memory of a dream. So striking, I still think about it now, with the show concluded, the only way I can revisit this beautiful piece is through the exhibition catalogue I have sitting on top of my drawer. 

This time, the art is printed on glossy paper not behind a frame hanging on a gallery wall. This piece I can touch and linger on for as long as it delights me. I can look and look and look, and have my fill of it. Every visit changes my perspective, just like a memory, or a memory of a dream.

Dream House, the faceless man, what is his story? Is this the house he looks at the dream he is working towards? Are we meant to be him? What does the house represent to us, something tangible or elusive like success? Though I might not have gotten the meaning straightened out yet, there is a joy and security of knowing that I can pop open my catalogue whenever and take another look.