Eduardo Paolozzi, Moonstrips Empire News

28 January - 17 May 2019 

Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005) was among the most influential British artists of the twentieth century. His diverse and prolific output spanning sculpture, screenprint, collage and textiles, pushed the boundaries of the art establishment and frequently earned him accolades as a great innovator and pioneer.

Created as a portfolio of 100 loose-leaf screenprints, Moonstrips Empire News, is contained in a day-glo pink acrylic box. In line with Paolozzi’s Surrealist preoccupations with chance and the uncanny, there is no set order for the prints in Moonstrips. Instead, the viewer is invited to perform the role of editor exploring the tensions between choice and chance within the predetermined visual language created by the artist. Imagery is lifted from diverse source material; from cartoons to scientific handbooks, classical icons to kitsch, machine parts to vibrant geometric patterns. All interact to present an eclectic, satirical and irreverent vision of oversaturation and excess in mass media culture.

Moonstrips Empire News is one of five screenprint volumes held by Research and Cultural Collections at the University of Birmingham. Moonstrips will be exhibited in the Rotunda Gallery alongside Paolozzi’s 1963 film History of Nothing, a selection of plaster maquettes and archival material relating to the large-scale sculptural commission, Faraday, installed outside the University train station in 2000.