Outrageous Fortune Tarot Deck

‘Outrageous Fortune’ was a Hayward Touring exhibition showcasing contemporary artists’ interpretations of the classic Tarot de Marseille deck of cards. Tarot playing cards originated in Italy in the 15th century. Used in most of Europe to play games, in the English-speaking world the tarot is generally associated with divination and fortune telling. A rich source of imagery, it includes such archetypes as The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Lovers, The Wheel of Fortune, and The Hanged Man. For this project, seventy-eight artists, whose work encompasses a variety of formal, conceptual, expressionist, literary or design-based approaches, were asked to create a card for a contemporary tarot pack. Each artist has been drawn a card randomly, and invited to reinterpret in their own way.