David Hockney

Celebrating the Bradford-born artist David Hockney’s pioneering exploration of film, photography, and digital media.

For this exhibition brand, styling and interpretation we created a flexible block design system inspired by Hockney’s inventive style and the way he pushes boundaries of how we experience images. Through his dynamic visual collages he reimagines the way we perceive time, movement, and perspective, inviting viewers to see the world as we actually experience it.

The heart of this exhibition was Hockney’s ‘The Four Seasons: Woldgate Woods’, a multi-screen video installation that immerses visitors in the changing landscape of Yorkshire throughout the year. Surrounding this were a series of Hockney’s early photographic ‘Joiners’, including one created at the museum itself in 1985, depicting the building in its original name as the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television.

Our approach aimed to frame these works within a spatial narrative that echoed Hockney’s own experimentation, layering photography, illustration, typography and panels in the physical environment to create an experience that felt both intimate and expansive.

The first sketch depicts a fictional creature that perceives the world through the rigid lens of one-point perspective. The second offers a striking contrast, a dynamic representation of human perception, where our eyes constantly move, capturing multiple viewpoints and fleeting moments all at once.

As well as the iconic ‘Joiners’ and ‘Four Seasons’ in this exhibition, we also presented a series of illustrations drawn from David Hockney’s 1983 lecture ‘On Photography’ at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.