New Gresty Word Up Exhibition

Designer Mr Gresty’s latest solo exhibition Word Up is a typographic catharsis into what he sees as his ‘ongoing struggle with language’.

Playfully delivered, each piece is heaped with context to help Gresty tell several stories.

At least two pieces refer visitors to host venue the Biddle Bros pub in east London. A Change in Character swaps the vowels I, A and U to form the words Drink, Drank and Drunk. If the D represents the head of a character and the K its legs, each word follows the typographic descent into intoxication. And of course its wavering and capricious change in character, brought on by the drink.

A Very British Riot – reminiscent of a style used by Trevor Jackson in album art for Soulwax – is a nod to the venue.

‘The last place the [August] rioters got to is four doors away from where the exhibition is,’ says Gresty.

Suspended in a white ceiling-hung frame, the typography can be read from both sides one blue on white and the other red on white. The composition is a grid of dots and the wording becomes clear as you back away.  

If anything can go wrong it will declares, If Anything Can Go Rong It Will with its flagrantly missing W, a testament to the painstaking screen print process.

‘Sneeze and the whole thing will offset or the colours will go wrong,’ says Gresty. The piece is part of a series of three.

Gresty has recently hosted an interpretive typographic exhibition around the theme Wish You Were Here and published a children’s book Twords, which has inspired Word Up.

Word Up runs from 3 December – 21 January 2012 at Biddle Bros on 88 Lower Clapton Road, Hackney, London, E5