PRINT! celebrates the power of the newsstand with a rendition of the Sloane Square kiosk
//Visitors to the show browse Newsstand magazines this week. Photo: Somerset House Trust//
//The kiosk on which our Newsstand is based was built for the news vendor at Sloane Square station 30-odd years ago//
Traditional newsstands figure among my favourite examples of London street vernacular architecture (if indeed they qualify as architecture – I’m no expert).
From the very first discussions about the exhibition PRINT! Tearing It Up with Somerset House co-curator Claire Catterall, I was keen that we should include a rendition of one which played with the proportions and presentation and displayed the latest issues of a range of magazines for visitors to browse.
As well as tipping my hat to this old-school magazine hub, I wanted to cross-reference a particular issue of The Face, the magazine which was the subject of my last book.
//Front cover, The Face no 100, September 1988. Photography: Anthony Gordon//
//Model Alex Arts at the Great Marlborough Street newsstand in the fashion story Alex Works: Careering Through The Eighties, styling Lindsay Baker and Kathryn Flett, photography Anthony Gordon, The Face, September 1988//
For the 100th issue in 1988, The Face editor and publisher Nick Logan used the newsstand at Great Marlborough Street in the West End – long the place where the earliest editions of a variety of titles are available in London – as the backdrop for a fashion shoot with all 100 issues displayed.
For PRINT! I settled on the kiosk outside Sloane Square station in Chelsea (not the Thomas Heatherwick-designed stand a few feet away). It’s a great structure and perfect for the space we allotted for the rendition in SH’s Terrace Rooms gallery.
Also, this is one of the central London kiosks where I have bought my copies of Private Eye on the first day they are available (every second Tuesday) for years, if not decades.
//My rough sketch of the front of the stand//
//Side elevation//
So I took photos on my phone and roughed out sketches.
Artist Eoin Donnelly, who was responsible for the exhibition build with The Whitewall Company, also visited the Sloane Square stand and translated my sketches into the workable drawings on which our newsstand is based.
//Drawing, Eoin Donnelly, 2018//
//Drawing, Eoin Donnelly, 2018//
//Preparation of the Newsstand during the exhibition install a couple of weeks back//
In a final flourish we decided the stand should be fluoro pink in keeping with the graphic identity created for the show by designer Scott King.
//Photo: Doug Peters//
While our newsstand is more formal and less cluttered than those on the streets, we’ve been encouraged by the response. Not only do people stop by and read the mags (which are on tethers), but some magazine producers have been putting copies of their own titles into the racks.
PRINT! Tearing It Up – Independent British magazines changing the world, Terrace Rooms, Somerset House, until Aug 22