Liam Gillick’s specially commissioned artwork Eat the Rich (2018) sits outside PUBLICS event space, dedicated library, office and meeting space in Helsinki. It can be seen outside when approaching the space as a relatively small outdoor lightbox and sited above one of PUBLICS large, open, highly visible, street level windows and for the passerby to have a sense of what happens inside. The work also provides PUBLICS with its own bespoke illuminated signage, making it easy for the visitor to find the space — in particular during the darker winter months.
Like much of Liam Gillick’s graphic work, it is a central to understanding his entire practice. Since the late 1980s, the artist has produced a wide range of graphic material, including prints, posters, books, magazine covers, record sleeves, invitation cards, maps, logos and identities, for both himself and for other artists, art projects, institutions and private galleries. These works combine the use of fonts, geometric shapes, pattern, graphic elements, plans and blueprints for a wide range of structures (for example, imaginary factories, stores, museums, planned and realized public commissions).
Many of the works play with the paradox of being recognizable and familiar (encouraged by the use of standard fonts and simplified patterns consisting of circles, squares, waves are vaguely reminiscent of modernist formal experiments) yet are also somewhat opaque, resisting easy legibility. This approach uses script and form as language in a strategic political deployment—reassuring in its simplicity yet also acting as provocation to draw attention to the aesthetic codes that shape everyday life.
Gillick often draws on a strategic “logical dislogic” and on a Situationist-inspired notion of play that acts as disruption in a self-consciously complex manner. A good example of this dynamic of playful disruption is the recurring phrase “So were people this dumb before television?” which the artist has referred to as “rhetoric culturally rehydrated into a functional yet paradoxically challenging phrase.” Gillick uses concrete references and wit as a lure while opaquely resisting easy comprehension towards the creation of productive irritation.
Gillick’s signs, lighboxes, posters, printed matter, and publications are often sited in public places. They are also artist’ editions entering into divergent institutions, private houses, schools and libraries. As such, Gillick’s graphic work can be understood as a continuous intervention into both the public realm, and the semi-private sphere—interjecting his work to expose and invite spectators (both those seeking out his work and the disinterested passersby) to participate in a mixture of play, resistance, potential and critique.