This publication documents Against Architecture by Ian McKeever – an exhibition that had its first incarnation, created in collaboration with Robin Klassnik, at Matt’s Gallery, London (2017) before being reconceived and presented as Against Architecture, Remodelled at TheGallery, Arts University Bournemouth (2023–24), curated by Violet M McClean as part of TheGallery’s twenty-fifth anniversary celebrations.

Against Architecture was McKeever’s first time working in installation, seeking to explore the relationships between his photo/painted panels and the physical spaces in which they are presented. For this he built a structure comprising myriad walls, passageways, openings, ledges and platforms, challenging the conventional white cube gallery space and bringing the viewer’s body into heightened dialogue with both their surroundings and the artworks. The works, a series of the acclaimed artist’s abstract paintings combined with ostensibly abstract photographs, pose formal and theoretical questions about perception, visual languages and modes of representation – ideas explored in an essay by Berlin-based English arts writer Mark Prince.

Like walking through a forest of architecture, painting and photography, the publication is lavishly illustrated. It features colour images of the original installation at our Decima Street, Bermondsey, space and the remodelled installation at TheGallery and black and white, work-in-progress images of the work being re-installed in 2023.

The publication features numerous text contributions including: an introduction by Professor Paul Gough, Principal and Vice- Chancellor, AUB; Sue Hubbard, poet, novelist and art critic; Violet M McClean, Curator at TheGallery, AUB; photography graduate Eliza Naden; interior architecture and design graduate Milly Louise Harvey; Associate Professor Dominic Shepherd, AUB; and McKeever himself. It is edited by Violet M McClean and Millie Lake, and designed by Warin Wareesangtip, has been produced in an edition of 1000 copies.

Ian McKeever was born 1946, Withernsea, Yorkshire, UK. He lives and works in Hartgrove, Dorset. McKeever has received numerous awards including the prestigious DAAD scholarship in Berlin 1989/90 and was elected a Royal Academician in 2003. He has held several teaching positions including Guest Professor at the Städel Akademie der Kunst in Frankfurt, Senior Lecturer, Slade, University of London and Visiting Professor at the University of Brighton. He has made four exhibitions at Matt's Gallery (Black and White...or How to Paint with a Hammer, 1985; The Marianne North Paintings,1995; Woodcut Study 1-f; Woodcut,1999 and Against Architecture, 2017) and produced two publications (Black and White...or How to Paint with a Hammer, 1985 and The Marianne North Paintings, 1995).