‘Hospital’ documents Pope.L’s last solo exhibition, held at South London Gallery from 21 November to 11 February 2024. Exploring ideas of memory, decay, forgetfulness, convalescence or mourning, where ‘personal and institutional metaphors of care metastasise into scenes of spills, shelves with holes, fallen towers, broken bottles, dripping liquids, always something ongoing, always something undone and wanting fixed with dust or stains or trampled flowers.’

Pope.L’s career centred on society, politics and contemporary culture, often revealing contradictory and provocative themes in language, gender, race, economics and community. This exhibition reconfigures key moments from his career into epic sculptures and intimate moments.

The publication takes you on a journey through the gallery, using numerous material interventions to reference materials found in the sculptures. From a transparent red sheet that nods towards the meat curtains found over the main entrance of the exhibition, a matt coated stock for the mostly full-bleed image pages, and a rough ‘newsprint’-like material for the text pages.

At odds with the expected large-sized exhibition catalogue, this publication has been designed to be more considered. Small in stature with a rounded spine, able to be carried around and read.

Text is set in LL Geigy, which references historical pharmaceutical stylings, and Imperial, designed by Edwin W. Shaar in the 1950s and often used to typeset US newspapers from the mid to late twentieth century. A nod to Pope.L’s famous ‘Eating the Wall Street Journal’ work.

A metallic silver paper is used for the endpapers and also wraps the section of imagery featuring the ground floor gallery room in the South London Gallery’a Fire Station building, where Pope.L covered the walls in tin foil. Visitors were then invited to explore the hung works with torches in an unlit room.

The cover of the book is wrapped in a high-gloss, wipe-clean pink material that echoes the wall colour found throughout the galleries. Foil stamped with the artist name horizontally on the front, and blind debossed with the exhibition title vertically on the reverse, forming a deconstructed medical ‘cross’.