10 VOICE

To the members of the Australian firm Voice, an exhibition catalog for photographer Toby Richardson was the kind of project that made them remember why they became designers. His show “Singles, Couples and Queens” featured shots of used mattresses, literally hauled from trash heaps back to his studio.

His large-format giclée prints reveal an astonishing richness of detail, and for Voice, the challenge was capturing the beauty of brocade, buttons and cigarette burns in a flat paper book. “The images are about textures, patterns and the history of impressions left by the owners,” says Scott Carslake of Voice. “By making these as large as possible we were able to draw attention to the subtleties in the mattresses, which also meant some images were too large for one page.”

They decided to run mattresses from one spread to the next, creating oversized pairings of otherwise unlikely bedfellows. The expected but still startling intimacy of such subject matter also lends a sense of importance to the relationship we have with the mattress itself, says Carslake. “Unlike carpets, mattresses remain hidden until the bed is stripped bare and we all at some stage will need to examine our own ‘mattress story’—because we all have one.” by Alissa Walker

Voice
CREATIVE DIRECTORS: Scott Carslake, Anthony Deleo
ART DIRECTOR: Scott Carslake
DESIGNER: Scott Carslake
PHOTOGRAPHER: Toby Richardson
COPYWRITERS: Toby Richardson, Dr. Linda Marie Walker
CLIENT: Toby Richardson
CONTACT: www.voicedesign.net