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Little Wonder...
3-28 February 2010
Jonathan Ward’s artists’ books display playful ingenuity, sensual textures and intimate scale. The exhibition draws together scattered milestones from boyhood to adulthood, laying bare the common mortifications of youth so excruciatingly private but so utterly universal.
Little Wonder... pays homage to the Brooke Bond Tea Card albums of the 1950s and ‘60s, replacing the collector cards on birds or motors with a series of artists’ books accompanied by Ward’s poignant moments and personal admissions. More than an exercise in nostalgia, Ward appears bound to these moments, edifying them as the building blocks of identity to be classified and combined as a form of neo-genome. An album of autobiographical description and blanched shadows indicating where each laser-cut card is to be affixed, the album becomes their repository. Drawn into a makeshift timeline, the fragments assemble under the authority of history.
The artist’s book offers containment, an opportunity to smile or cringe anew at formative woe from the safe distance of adulthood. Ultimately, it is the spectral outlines that haunt as they extend from the album into the gallery, evoking unknown futures and an irretrievable past.
The exhibition will also feature artists’ books by Yvonne Bucheim, Chris Hill, Rob Hunter, Dawn Mason, Jonathan McNaught and Ben Newman.
Little Wonder...
A series of thirty cards of discontinuities, personal schisms and varying timescales. Designed by Jonathan Ward and published by KALEID editions. A limited edition of five hundred silkscreen and pigment printed collector albums accompanied with a selection of laser cut tea cards. To complete the set if thirty, the final cards will be posted to each collector by Royal Mail in tandem with Ward’s future publications.
Bathtime Embroidery on cotton flannels, screenprint on ribbon 2010, edition of twenty
Little wonder... Booklet and laser cut tea cards 2010. Collectors album and starter pack, edition of five-hundred £25
Collared Dog collar, dog-tags and inkjet on Japanese paper 2010
If my Mother was a Cow Linocut and screenprint on cotton 1998, Edition of five
Galling Moments Inkjet on paper and transparent film, found wooden box, LED lightbox and oak gall wood 2009
Catching Breath Inkjet and screenprint on silk in soap-stone trinket box 2010
Blue Notes Tin, velvetine, ribbon and inkjet on photographic paper 2009, edition of thirty
Felt Screenprinted felt, wooden bead, leather lace and pillar buttons 1998, edition of ten
The Official Nursery Book for Child Prodigies and Celestial Beings Screenprint on incontinence sheeting 1995
Shadow on the Lung Screenprint on felt, inkjet on paper and thread 2010, edition of thirty
Three Years Forward Linocut & screenprint on cotton 1994, edition of one-hundred and fifty
Suppose Screenprint on varnished cotton, eyelets and treen pot 2010
In Loco Parentis Digital Laser Print on paper 2010, edition of one-hundred and fify
If you... Acetone imprinted laser print on paper, linen boards and feathers 1996,
Bandage On glaze enamel screenprint on tile with felt and strap 1995, edition of ten
Stargazey Screenprinted velvetine, wadding, boards and felt 2010, edition of ten
First Catch Screenprint on paper, inkjet on paper, fishing line and velvetine 2010, edition of twenty-five
Lie of the Land Rubber stamps and pencil on paper, screenprinted wooden box with padded satin and rolling pins 1995
The Botanist’s Keepsake Screenprint on JPP Archival Board, Inkjet on paper, die-cut, pillar screws, ribbon 2000, edition of two-hundred
My dad’s dog’s bigger than yours - Chris Hill
Inkjet on card and Japanese paper 2010, edition of thirty
People I Remember, Places I Don’t - Rob Hunter
Screenprinted, digital laser interior, handsewn 2010, edition of ten £45
Lost Worlds - Jonathan McNaught
Inkjet cover, screenprinted contents, edition of ten £120
Uncommon Prayers - Dawn Mason
Altered found books using print and stitch, unique 2010
MUSIK Lehrbuch - Yvonne Bucheim
Altered East German music exercise book, unique 2010
Photograph Alessandra Chilá
FLASH Review Redchurch Idler
If Red fox fur, white sugar, dandelion seeds in microscopic close-up on original Brooke Bond tea
cards might be catalysts for Jonathan Ward’s new
album Little wonder..., that touchstones unforgettable
childhood moments such as bathtime, a trip to the
barber’s, and fishing in hidden places. The lacunae
where his new set of 30 laser-cut cards will fit are
heavy with suspenseful pathos, and alongside
retrospective images of his funky artists’ books, make
up a collection-in-progress, hoarded moments and
rites-of-passage that record the scrapes and scars
of growing up; existence toughened by therapeutic
abreaction, the future a gallery of uncrystallised events.
