Barnaby Barford: The Apple is Everything

Softcover | 17.02 x 2.64 x 23.65 cm | 288 pp

ACC Art Books | 2022 | 9781788841641

In The Apple is Everything, sculptor Barnaby Barford offers a celebration of this fruit using over 240 illustrations and photographs of apples, illustrating their place within culture and the impact on the history of humankind. Apples have become a recent feature of Barford’s eye-catching installations, whether ripe and healthy or in a state of decay. The Apple is Everything guides the reader through Barford’s work and ideology.

In mythology, art history and religious iconography, the apple has been imbued with every imaginable human desire. It has been a symbol of love and beauty, of temptation, of immortality, peace, death and poison, of sin and redemption. From Adam and Eve to the trials of Heracles, to the art of Cézanne and Magritte, to Newton’s theory of gravity, the death of Alan Turing and the growth of Steve Jobs, the apple resonates throughout western culture. It is Snow White, William Tell, it is The Beatles and the Viking gods, it is even the American frontier.

Working across drawing, sculpture, film, installation and painting, Barnaby uses familiar iconography such as the humble Apple, to subvert the telling of ancient cautionary tales within a contemporary context. Whether using shops, apples, flowers or words, throughout his work, Barnaby holds up a mirror to society, prompting us to look again and reflect upon inequalities, obsessions and systems of belief.