David Mabb has gained international recognition for his work which investigates the utopian socialist vision of William Morris, by contrasting his designs with revolutionary art from the early twentieth century.
In this exhibition, Mabb overlays pages from a facsimile edition of Morris’s most celebrated book design, the Kelmscott Chaucer (1896), with enlarged recreations of Russian artist El Lissitzky’s acclaimed illustrations from For the Voice (1923), a book of revolutionary poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky.
Morris and Lissitzky both used their art to promote their socialist politics. Yet whilst Morris saw beauty in the past, wanting to elevate Victorian society from the ugliness imposed by industrial manufacturing, for Lissitzky, the Russian revolution (1917) and the rapid advancement of science and technology meant the old world was no longer recognisable. He sought an entirely new visual language that could express the socialist world he believed he was helping to construct.
Mabb draws our attention to the different directions of Morris and Lissitzky’s influences. Although on the surface they become collaborators, their designs remain distinct, never able to fully merge or separate.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/12173