Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press: Font

The original press release for the exhibition Font was typeset in a new font designed by Fiona Banner, also titled Font. Banner's font is an amalgamation of typefaces she has worked with previously, through full stop sculptures and typeset and published works.

Font was conceived during the artist's attempt to survey her practice in preparation for this exhibition and her first survey exhibition, forthcoming at Ikon, Birmingham. She deploys it as the house font for the Ikon exhibition and it appears here, forming a link between the two.

The attempt to survey is also a theme in Banner's new film Phantom which features the artist's most recent publication; an illustrated reprint of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. In this film a Phantom drone camera simultaneously observes and harries the book like a hawk chasing down its prey. As the drone attempts to focus on the text and images, the downdraught from its rotor blades animates the pages and causes the book to flee before it. The publication under scrutiny takes the form of a glossy magazine bringing to mind notions of luxury and desire. Here the text is paired with images of the City of London which Banner commissioned from Magnum conflict photographer Paolo Pellegrin. The book also contains Banner's drawings depicting close-ups of pinstripe, a play on the livery and camouflage of the Square Mile.

Phantom is projected above an elongated structure which runs almost the full length of the gallery. Entitled SS16 this piece evokes the architecture of fashion shows. Here the catwalk provides the stage for a graphite drawing in the form of an ornate pinstripe pattern.

Pinstripe also adorns the sculpture Nose Art. Here two Harrier Jump-Jet nose cones fixed high on the wall are covered in graphite pinstripe. The term 'Nose Art' refers to a military form of folk art, where aircraft are graffitied with popular cultural icons. Banner sees the nose cone as the most heroic part of an aircraft, and in this piece they are reminiscent of hunting trophies or breasts.

Nose to Nose depicts two fan-operated windsocks rising and falling in a heated discourse with one another. They become expressive characters communicating via a strangely emotional semaphore within the very gallery space where the film is shown.

In Agent Provocateur a single illuminated windsock stands over a copy of Banner's version of Heart of Darkness. Its beam is a search-light attempting to focus on the book, while an intermittent current of air agitates the pages.

A found 19th-century baptismal font partially obstructs the entrance/exit to the gallery. Engraved with the word 'font' it creates a playful slippage between naming, language and object/image, a recurrent theme in Banner's work.

Fiona Banner (b. 1966) studied at Kingston Polytechnic and Goldsmith's College London. Her exhibition Scroll Down And Keep Scrolling ran at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham 10 October 2015–17 January 2016. This exhibition is accompanied by a major new artist's book of the same title.

The typeface Font was developed in collaboration with Fraser Muggeridge Studio and will be available to download on www.fionabanner.com from 17 September.