Mark Gowing: Inside the Oblong collects twenty years of posters by one of Australia’s leading designers. The volume is a portrait of Gowing’s uncompromising process for commercial clients, exhibitions, film, music and his own personal practice. Always with an audience in mind, the featured commercial works include the likes of 2SER Radio, Australian War Memorial, Hopscotch Films, Preservation Music, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney Opera House, University of Technology Sydney and the Venice Art Biennale. The book also offers a selection of personal works, including the Warsaw Poster Biennale Gold Medal-winning Oil Kills Peace.
Gowing has spent the better part of twenty years exploring the rhythms, proportions and dynamics of the oblong space that is the poster. During this time he has created works for film, music, publishing, business and the arts, and has seen the world shift from the printed sheet to the digital display. No matter what the end medium, Gowing frequently uses the poster format as a means to experiment and challenge the conversation being held with the viewer. He believes that the process of good poster design can be a way to uncover new visual languages, which he explores with abandon—examining varying levels of typographic and cultural coding, while at the same time pushing the boundaries of his craft.
Mark Gowing: Inside the Oblong features an essay by UK writer and Eye Magazine editor John L. Walters, and a foreword by designer and editor Kevin Finn.
288 pages, 17 x 24cm, softcover, Formist (Sydney).