Garry Fabian Miller

ADORE is a major retrospective at the Arnolfini, inviting audiences on this journey, exploring the artist’s ‘camera-less’ practice and weaving in work by artists, writers and thinkers that have inspired him across the last five decades.

HS worked closely with Fabian Miller to create the visual identity, campaign and accompanying book to this extraordinary show.

From the outset Fabian Miller fostered an ambition for the exhibition to stretch beyond the physical confines of the gallery and into the surrounding city of Bristol – a celebratory festival of musicians, filmmakers and writers, poets and collaborators who have contributed to Garry’s extraordinary practice. In this sense, the show is a gift to the city, a thing of joy – and as Fabian Miller describes it – ‘affirmation of a life well-lived’

The campaign served as an extension of this idea – creating the means of bringing a smaller series of works into the streets of the city. The images themselves are powerful compositions of colour, symmetry and form, so the typographic system needed to feel harmonious, whilst establishing structure and rigour. Scale was also an important consideration; the large application of the word ADORE evokes a feeling of generosity, again, playing back the notion that the show is a gift.

This typographic approach was extended into the design of the book that has been published to coincide with the show. 255 pages in length, the format of the book is both precious and intimate.
Bound in a limited edition of three colours, each of them makes reference to a colour inherent in Fabian Miller’s work itself. The cover carries a single ring, a recurring motif in his work. It also suggests the completion of a life cycle and is symbolic of the sun – the most powerful light source of all.