Axis Projects is my independent publishing venture, bringing together many years of working with artists, cultural organisations and creative collaborators. It grows out of my own practice as an artist and book designer, and a long-standing belief in the book as more than a vehicle for presenting work. For me, publishing is a creative process in its own right: a space to explore the relationships between images, words, materials and ideas, and to find forms that can take a project in unexpected directions.
The books and projects I develop are varied in both their subject and approach. Some emerge from long-term artistic relationships; others begin with a particular place, an archive, a conversation or a shared curiosity. Each offers an opportunity to think about how a project might exist on the page, and how the physical qualities of a book can shape the experience of encountering it.
A collaboration with poet Helen Tookey, for example, brought photography and poetry into conversation, allowing image and language to find their own rhythms and associations. Cambridge Rules 1848, developed with artist Neville Gabie, took a different direction. Conceived as a sculptural publication, the book extended a public art project into a physical form that reflected its subject and setting.
Photographs from Another Place grew from a collection of rediscovered glass negatives. What began as an investigation into unfamiliar photographs gradually became an intensely personal project, shaped by unexpected autobiographical coincidences and connections between the people, places and histories encountered along the way. The resulting publication became part of that unfolding process of discovery.
More recently, Nothing Remained Unchanged but the Clouds has developed from my ongoing work around Grandpré in the French Ardennes. Drawing on a collection of German First World War postcards and contemporary photography, the project also grew through exchanges with people connected to the village. The book brings together archival material, photographs and a wider sense of shared memory, reflecting how an archive can become something living, shaped by community, recognition and conversation.
These projects are quite different, but they share an interest in the possibilities of collaboration, the unexpected connections that emerge through making, and the ways a book can hold and transform an idea. Axis Projects is a place for that work to take shape: an ongoing exploration of the artist book as both a form of expression and a way of bringing people, images and stories together.
Axis Projects is delighted to say Cutting the Mustard by Robin Ireland was shortlisted for the 2026 BSSH Lord Aberdare Literary Prize. Signed copies are still directly available from the author. All other current books are available on the shop page of this site.
