Catalogue for the critically acclaimed exhibition by Baghdad-born artist Mohammed Sami at Blenheim Palace, the latest in a series of artists’ interventions there that to date have included Tino Sehgal, Jenny Holzer and Ai Weiwei.

Blenheim Palace, a gift from Queen Anne to the first Duke of Marlborough in recognition of his triumph at Battle of Blenheim in 1704 and later the birthplace of wartime prime minister Winston Churchill, is a monument to military glory. In this environment of formal portraits, gilt furniture and baroque chandeliers, Sami’s people-less, pocked abstracted scenes offered an unsettling counter-narrative to the traditional pomp of military prowess.

The elegant, minimal layout of the book featuring both artist‘s plates and photographs of the paintings in situ, as well as centred, justified typography in KW Serif lends the book a classical quality. This echoes the context of the exhibition to which the paintings were a disruption.