A Practice for Everyday Life designs book for artist Magali Reus

London-based design studio A Practice For Everyday Life has created a publication to coincide with artist Magali Reus’ first institutional solo show in London.

The exhibition, which ran last month at South London Gallery, featured Magali’s sculptural and site-specific installations that reconfigure recognisable items – like locks, firehoses and raffle tickets – into otherworldly systems where their function is unclear. The exhibition began at the Bergen Kunsthalle before before travelling to the Camberwell gallery last month.

For the book, A Practice for Everyday Life wanted to to reflect Magali’s combination of recognisable and unrecognisable forms by developing an manual-like approach. “The book is both a purposeful record of information and a collection of found sections,” the studio told It’s Nice That. “Her works are subtly suggestive of familiar apparatus, and their forms highlight and explore the contrast between manufacture and craft; versions of mass-produced objects often feature as handmade one-offs, and everyday objects or details are manipulated within their structures.”

The soon-to-be-released book begins with maps of the London and Bergen exhibitions, alongside installation images. These sections are interspersed with essay sections and inserts representing 1:1 scale reproductions of the bespoke backpack straps and fire hoses that feature within Magali’s work.

Apfel picked colours for the cover and pages that reference the “distinctive palette of slightly jarring tones found within Reus’ work”. “The punched holes on the cover and within the essay pages signify a sense that the book is formed of found sections collected together,” Apfel continues. The three typefaces used in the book reflect those found within the works. “Each compliments the others in size, but fights against them visually,” the studio adds.