Studies / Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press – ‘Every Word Unmade’

Saturday 21 March 2026 12:00
Saturday 25 April 2026 17:00

The Common Guild 5 Florence Street G5 0YX (map)

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Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press, ‘Every Word Unmade’, 2007 (detail). Courtesy the artist. Artwork courtesy the David and Indrė Roberts Collection.

Our first exhibition of 2026 is the first in a new, annual series, entitled ‘Studies’, developed in conjunction with the Roberts Institute of Art. Each exhibition will draw from the collection to present key works by major artists. ‘Studies’ centres upon well-established artistic practices and works made in the 1990s – 2000s that particularly connect with now. The first exhibition in the series is focussed on a work by Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press.

‘Every Word Unmade’ (2006–7) is a neon alphabet, very evidently hand-made by the artist, who bent hot glass into the 26 letterforms of the alphabet. The struggle against and with the medium, and with language itself is evident. As Banner has said, “words are extensions of our physical selves, so I started to explore the physicality of words”.

Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press, ‘Every Word Unmade’, 2007 (detail). Courtesy the artist. Artwork courtesy the David and Indrė Roberts.

It is a work, like many of Banner’s, about communication and the building blocks of language. Here, the fragile and faltering letter forms are combined, in the use of neon, with the seductive language of the street and commerce. ‘Every Word Unmade’ represented a departure from Banner’s densely verbal work that addressed the myths and narratives of conflict – a playful attempt to denude language of its manipulative power. ‘Every Word Unmade’ will be accompanied by a small selection of related works by the artist.

About the artist /

Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press explores gender, language, interpretation and publishing through a range of media, including drawing, sculpture, performance and moving image. The struggle between language and its limitations is central to Banner’s conceptual approach. With an interest in how conflict is mythologised through popular culture, her early work took the form of ‘wordscapes’ or ‘still films’, blow-by-blow accounts in her own words of feature films, from war movies to porn, from intimate scenes to historical events. These works evolved into solid single blocks of text, often the same shape and size as a cinema screen. 

In 1997 Banner started her own publishing imprint The Vanity Press, with her monumental The Nam. She has since published many works, as books, sculptural objects or performances. In 2009 she issued herself an ISBN number and registered herself as a publication under her own name.

About the Roberts Institute of Art /

The Roberts Institute of Art (RIA) is a non-profit contemporary arts organisation. They commission pioneering performance art, run a residency programme in Scotland, collaborate with national partners on exhibitions and work to research and share the David and Indrė Roberts Collection.

The David and Indrė Roberts Collection features nearly 2,500 works by over 900 artists, dating from the mid-20th century to today. The collection is rooted in a passion for contemporary art and an ambition to share extraordinary work by some of the world’s most influential artists and to support artists at different stages of their careers.