Mr. Controversial

When artist Mr. Controversial approached us about scaling one of his original artist books for a solo show at a Kensington gallery, we knew this wasn't a job for shortcuts. The brief was simple in concept and complex in execution — take an original six-inch paperback from his celebrated painted book series and recreate it at over one metre tall, without losing a single detail.

The process started with careful deconstruction. Each page was individually extracted from the original book and passed through a high-resolution flatbed scanner, capturing full colour fidelity and texture at print-ready quality. Every spread, every imperfection, every nuance of the original paper stock was preserved in the scan data before a single sheet was reproduced.

Pages were then reprinted both sides onto a carefully matched heavyweight card stock, chosen for its weight and opacity to replicate the hand-feel and structural integrity of the source material at scale. Once all interior pages were produced, they were collated in exact sequence and professionally bound, with custom-manufactured covers fabricated front and back to complete the volume.

The finished book was then returned to Mr. Controversial in London, where he hand-painted the cover in oils — exactly as he does with his original series — before sending it back to us for final finishing.

We laser cut and fabricated a bespoke acrylic display case entirely in-house, engineered to hold the book at the precise angle specified for gallery presentation. The book was mounted, the case was sealed, and the whole piece was packed into a custom shipping crate for safe transit to London.

On installation day, our team travelled south and fitted the work directly to the gallery walls in Kensington — handling the project from first prototype through to final hang.