The Mulberry Tree Press

Artists include:
Antepress, Ruth Beale, Becky Beasley, Sean Borodale, Eleanor Vonne Brown, Roderick Buchanan, Ben Cain, Richard Dyer, Doug Fishbone, Hollis Frampton, Alex Frost, Katie Guggenheim, Emma Hart, Mike Harte, Gary Hill, George Henry Longly, Maria Marshall, Anthony McCall, Jeremy Millar, St Pierre and Miquelon, Gary O’Connor, Kate Owen, George Quasha, Martha Rosler, Jamie Shovlin, John Smith, Matthew Smith, Andrew Tinsdall.

Film screenings and monitor films curated by Gilly Fox.
Cabinets 2 exhibit curated by Laura McLean-Ferris.
Ruth Beale selected by Fleur van Muiswinkel.

The Mulberry Tree Press is a multiplatform exhibition curated by Jonathan Houlding, Nicola Oxley and Nicolas de Oliveira and includes weekly performances, round table discussions and film screenings. The name is inspired by the legendary tree from a garden in Deptford designed by the diarist John Evelyn. It launches an eponymous, fictitious publishing house, which introduces the idea that printing renders all things equal on the page.

This exhibition reflects on the relationship between space, object and text, how they exist one in the other, side-by-side, and separate. The focus on liminality, the boundary or threshold between different locations and states of production lie at the heart of the exhibition. It is concerned with the translation or transcription that takes place in order to facilitate this passage from one place to another, from the studio and the gallery to the printed page.

Over two months, the exhibition attempts a transformation, turning spatial artworks situated in the gallery into a form that might function as a publication. It is not intended that this take the shape of a standard catalogue, in which, appearance, structure and content are largely known from the outset. Instead, the publication will bring together artworks, events and writings generated by the project’s process of research, dialogue and display: from one physical state to the next, from space, action, and thing, to text.
The gallery is turned into a production office that generates and disseminates content on a daily basis. The space is divided into a number of different zones, typified by simple display devices: a table, a set of shelves, two pinboards, a plinth, three cabinets, a monitor. Each of these marks out a territory, a way of showing, indeed, an idea of specific presentation. The table is a place for writing, reading and the centrepiece of a discussion-series with curators, writers and artists. Shelves provide browsing material through a pamphlet library. Two facing wall-spaces are given over to different artists during the project; their activities will be subsequently gathered and inventoried on a palimpsest in the shape of a pinboard. Adjacent glass cabinets are organised by different curators, while a monitor shows a curated programme of artists’ films. A number of live performances and weekly events complement the exhibition.