Joan and Neville Gabie

Introduction extracted from the boxset:

Emailing Antarctica: drawing a response to emails from the ice shelf

I am delighted that a project with Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum provided the impetus to publish this very special box set.

Early in 2011 the Art Gallery & Museum heard we had been successful in an application for New Expressions 2’s programme of artists’ commissions supported by MLA Renaissance South West and the National Lottery through Grants for the Arts. We wanted to develop a project inspired by our Antarctic collections based around our small gallery dedicated to Cheltenham-born Dr Edward Wilson and extensive Wilson Family Archive. Wilson was a leading member of Captain Scott’s two National Antarctic Expeditions, dying with Scott following their journey to the South Pole in 1912. It seemed appropriate to mark the centenary by adding a significant commissioned work to our collections.

Neville Gabie had been to Antarctica in 2008-9 as part of the British Antarctic Survey/Arts Council England Artists in Antarctica programme and we approached him about the project. He was very interested, especially as he had not shown his Antarctic work in a final form. However one aspect of the collection particularly excited him and his wife Joan. This was the Wilson Family Archive, which includes letters and scrapbooks belonging to Ida Wilson (Edward’s sister) providing an intriguing picture of how people, and in particular Wilson’s family, back in Cheltenham viewed the expedition. It was agreed that while Neville was away he would send Joan a daily email about what he was thinking and experiencing and she would respond with a drawing. The drawings produced sometimes respond to the emails, sometimes take an entirely different tack and sometimes are much more concerned with domestic life back at home. With their potential for mismatching, and awareness of the distance between them these seemed to link to some of the material in the archive and in particular an especially poignant letter and telegram. The letter is an almost complete transcript of the penultimate letter of Edward Wilson to his wife, Oriana, written in March 1912. Wilson writes:

Life has been a struggle for some weeks now on this return journey from the Pole….Today may be the last effort. Birdie and I are going to try and reach the depot 11 miles North of us and return to this tent where Capt Scott is lying with a frozen foot… Our effort today is rather a forlorn hope but I hope this will reach you … I look forward to meeting you after this life is over. I shall simply fall and go to sleep in the snow and I have your little books with me in my breast pocket ….

The telegram also from Oriana, who was staying in New Zealand, gives the latest news of her husband from the Polar Plateau. It is dated 3 April 1912, when Edward had in fact been dead for a month.

Neville and Joan visited to see the collection, the key documents of which filled our vast conference room tables, even we were surprised at how much there is seen en masse. Fairly soon they decided that the best way to present the work would be in some form of limited-edition box set. This is published in two volumes, deliberately to maintain a space between the text and the images, and thus to preserve the distance between them when the work was made.

The work is largely in monochrome and this and Joan’s bold washes and energetic drawing contrast with the colour and precise detail of Wilson’s own. So as Neville describes ‘bruised and purple clouds’ Joan’s bold black watery strokes and drips create the landscape described with powerful economy. Her scenes of an imagined Antarctic contrast with those of life back home with their seemingly small domestic dramas and witty depictions of the everyday.

Neville does not think of himself as a writer but his descriptions of both his surroundings and his feelings enticingly draw the reader in. His words echo the interior landscape described by those who go to the Antarctic: thoughts of family, love, and, most of all, mortality.

Do I feel scared by my vulnerability? No but I am far more aware of mortality and conscious of something much greater than myself and I am comforted by that. What was is it the Bible says – to be ‘in the world but not of it’.

The boxset was shown with an exhibition of the work at the Gardens Gallery, Cheltenham, 17–27 March 2012.

Helen Brown

Collections Manager and Curator of Fine Art

Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum

Exhibition opening for Alan Ward: Books

A collection of our favourite books from the studio

Click here for the pdf invite and here for the pdf poster, my thanks to Paul Morris for the photos, I didn't have time to do any after installing all the books in the vitrines, I ran out of time.

The A0 photographs of Chorltonians with our books, taken by Len Grant hanging in the windows, are the images we used on an earlier trade advert see here for details.

Newport PR read as follows:

Alan Ward runs Axis Graphic Design in Manchester. For the last twenty years he has been designing publications for galleries individual artists and publishing houses, working for some of the most noteworthy artists around today. The exhibition contains a variety of outstanding examples of modern book design and clearly illustrates the central role a designer plays in the integration of text image and format.

Accompanying the exhibition are a series of tagged videos that show the publications’ content in double time on YOUTUBE

My Introduction panel:

Little did I realise the journey I was embarking on when I graduated from Newport in the late 8os, although all the signs were there in retrospect. I made my first concertina book in my final year. I was really interested in photography and it drove and inspired much of my work. I often gate crashed ‘Doc Phot’ events and lectures, and it was here that I first encountered many of today’s leading British photographic exponents, and it was with some of them that I started my editorial design journey.

I designed many of the early Cornerhouse photographic books, progressively broadening my field into gallery and contemporary art spheres, where I have ultimately established the studio’s practice. Almost all my work is based in the cultural sector and my role is often as collaborator, editor, researcher as well as designer and in some cases publisher too. I feel genuinely lucky to work closely with artists and curators on a daily basis.

It’s always difficult to encapsulate the sum of a book when it’s being displayed in a vitrine. Much of which I pride myself on is buried and not immediately visible in design terms. Books for me are a very personal, often quiet, tactile experience. You can mulled it over, flick through it and revisit many times, discovering new elements. It’s not just the cover but the feel of the paper stock, the smell of the ink, the binding, or the white space on the page. All these elements and more add up to the whole. For me a successful design process is one where you appreciate and enjoy the work first and then notice that the design is actually quite good too.

Selecting just a few representative spreads from a small selection of books has been almost impossible. I’ve QR tagged several of the books on display to a set of modest little videos on YouTube of me leafing through them at speed, should you wish to explore them a little more.

Acknowledgements: My thanks to Len Grant for use of these portraits, Martin Stockley and Manchester University Press for the extra supplies of their respective publications. To Seb my son for making the little videos in our back room at home and to Paul Morris for inviting me back. And finally to Mikey, Martyn and Paul for those enduring Newport memories!

It's a data poster of five rides in the Northern Alps of France.

"Two members of the Ski Chair Lift Phobia Society practise sitting close to the edge!" is the winner

Thanks to all the entries, we had a lot of fun. As no one guessed the location exactly, a spot prize, was awarded to @spalmerama, for his attempt to 'tempt' the judges with a topical MCFC joke about Tevez - however my team being Norwich meant it was still a tad too painful after the football lesson the other week. Still we beat Newcastle comfortably enough!

Alan Ward

We are looking for the best caption to go with this image and will be giving away a small selection of publications from the Axis archive as a reward.

Click on the image for a larger version.

Open only to UK submissions, you may email us or tweet a direct message to enter.

The winner will be selected by ourselves and Len Grant, 'photographer extraordinaire' on Dec 15, so we can send the winner their christmas package.

image © Axis

Having designed the exhibition publication and been there on the opening night I was keen to catch it again in a quieter moment - its always hard looking at work at previews, there's people in the way!

Here are a few pictures I took on the trip.

Mr Doyle not happy about the weather.

Mostyn's beautiful facade through the rain spattered windscreen.

The 'Red Mountains' with the wood engrained concrete interior  of the new build in the background. Just loved that juxtaposition, intentional or not, I don't know.

A close-up of the 'Redwood Cut Ups' from which I took details for the screen-printed cover.

The giant pencil stubs, well that's what they remind me of - 'Red Dome' and a detail.

'Blue Ring' made of blue bell seeds scattered on a plinth with a luminous pastel canvas seemingly reflecting on the wall.

'Encased Cross', my little iphone couldn't get the colour right at all but loved this piece.

Detail from 'Millennium Door'.

The Black room with 'Husk' in foreground, 'Torso' left and 'King and Queen' right - and some bloke walking through shot.

Detail for 'Queen' which I found fascinating as from the front they both looked quite robust and balanced but from close up and at a particular angle they became very delicate and tall, looking quite unstable. Quite a skill judging the overall balance and effect.

It had stopped raining by the time we walked along the impressive victorian promenade, the sea and sky meeting in a Lowryesque blur on the horizon. Mark declared he didn't fancy full-blown fish and chips as he was on a diet, so we ate fishfinger sandwiches (the food of Kings) and soup in The Fat Cat - worth a visit if you are in town - discussed the state of the artworld and then headed home.

The seagull on the chippy van looked like he'd have mugged anyone who went near him.

AW

To see the book in detail [click here]

This book is the definitive reference on the Domini Canes commission from Lowood Gallery and Kennels, Cumbria that Simon Patterson undertook nearly 10 years ago. Not until now has it been properly documented.

Available in a standard and special edition. For more details click here

The publication includes an interview with the artist by Patricia Bickers and historical notes on the Monastery of San Marco and its frescos that inspired Simon's work.

Extract from interview in book with Patricia Bickers:

Q: How did you make the leap from the idea of prison cells to the idea of monk’s cells, specifically the cells frescoed by Fra Angelico and his assistants for the Dominican Convento di San Marco in Florence?

A: The genesis of the work is no longer so clear in my mind after all this time, but so many things seemed to point me in a particular direction – not least the idea of dogs guarding the Christian ‘flock’. It was an added bonus, too, that Jeremy was familiar with San Marco, having spent time in Italy many years earlier and he quickly caught on to what I wanted to do and encouraged me.

Obviously entry to a monastery, unlike a prison, is generally voluntary, but there are otherwise many similarities. I distinctly remember, for instance, being struck by the strict routine of feeding, grooming, and exercise that shaped the day, both for the kennel staff and for the animals in their care. At some point this, and the obvious need to segregate the sexes, must have chimed with my sense of a monastic order. I also thought the name, Lowood Pet Hotel, was amusing but also true because in a way the kennels function somewhat like a retreat, both for the animals and their owners, which also has an obvious religious resonance.

When I went to Florence the year before my first visit to Lowood – to oversee the publication of a book that was being printed there – I took some time out to visit San Marco. I was astonished by the intimate scale of the cells, and by the fact that each cell is individually frescoed with a different contemplative image. I translated this by the simple means of having the walls of the kennels painted in different colours. I chose colours that corresponded as much as possible to those used for fresco painting at the time, principally earth pigments such as yellow ochre, burnt umber, red earth, ultramarine blue and variations in between with the addition of white. In other words: yellow, red, blue, brown and white.

ISBN 978-0-9554825-4-0

72pp foil and blind embossed hardback

42 colour words and 7 reference images

Dims 220 x 172mm portrait

The format of the publication references the look of Kennel Club stud books

It is an edition of 500, of which the first 100 have a numbered and signed, tipped-in digital print by the artist

the special edition also has a marker ribbon and black endpapers, standard edition has white endpapers and no marker ribbon

To buy either version click here

Axis is delighted to continue building this series of catalogues for Paisnel Gallery, each having a different typeface featured, but at the same time a clear housestyle being evident. The importance of colour reproduction continues to challenge us and the colour experts we work with, especially as some of the paint pigments and inks need very careful conversion from RGB to CMYK. We think the results speak for themselves however, beautiful staccato printing faithfully reproducing the work.

Softback, 72pp with 8pp cover.