News

News:

Book teaser

Here is a sneak look at the new artist book as I have had an advance from the printer, I’ve now added the tip-ins and stamped the board cover, all looking really grand!

And all artwork ready now for exhibiting in Grandpre starting 15th, where I’ll be showing work made over the last 4 years, including 3D work made in conjunction with Jeffrey knopf, with new pieces premiering in Grandpré and Abbaye de Chéhéry.

If you fancy a copy of the book of this project it can still be ordered at pre-launch price from my website alanjward.co.uk/shop – French orders https://axisprojects.bigcartel.com 

Voici un petit aperçu du livre terminé : l’exemplaire préliminaire est arrivé, j’ai ajouté les pages intercalaires et tamponné la couverture grise. Il est vraiment magnifique. Un magnifique reflet du projet et de la collaboration. Si vous souhaitez toujours commander un exemplaire – sans y inscrire votre nom, bien sûr ! – vous pouvez toujours le commander sur https://axisprojects.bigcartel.com

News:

Final week for pre-order of ‘Nothing remained unchanged but the clouds’

Thank you to all those who have supported this publication to date. Don’t miss out by subscribing in advance, you not only secure a copy at a reduced pre-publication price, but you will also have your name included as a supporter. You will be actively supporting the realisation of this independent, community-rooted publication – ensuring that these shared memories and everyday histories find a lasting place in print and share the story of this place to a wider audience. See here for UK orders and here for European orders.

News:

Announcement: ‘would like to meet’ – Quarantine

Delighted to announce I’ve been selected as one of five Greater Manchester artists to participate in Quarantine‘s ‘Would Like to Meet’ cross border intergenerational exchange, with five artists from Chemnitz Germany.

I am paired with a young self trained artist named Linus Grösel who works across music and visual art.

Here are Linus’s social media accounts if you fancy a follow:

Linus’s Zwischenwelten project website
Linus’ Instagram

The idea is that we will all come together for two residencies in both countries later in the year. Where we will share practice, and make time for each other to ask questions across generations and our cities. It is a very open ended and experimental engagement and I’m really looking forward to sharing my city but also discovering his.

Image: Collection of David Gledhill

News:

Pre-order new publication ‘Tout avait changé sauf les nuages’

Coming soon the book of the ‘La Vojo’ project Tout avait changé sauf les nuages

Pre-order here for £26 and have your name included as a supporter of this community-led publication.

Nothing remained unchanged but the clouds is a compelling artist book by Alan J. Ward, developed through a series of residencies and genuine community collaboration in Grandpré, in the French Ardennes.

What began with German WWI postcards evolved into a dynamic, participatory digital archive – a living repository of memory and material culture that places micro-histories at the heart of collective identity.

Through a vibrant interdisciplinary practice spanning visual art, heritage, and archaeology, Ward reclaims the postcard as both artefact and medium – occupying the charged space between image and text, private memory and public history. This book invites readers to navigate fragmented narratives and visual traces that continue to shape Grandpré’s past, present, and imagined futures.

“The book is a collective effort. It gives voice to local memory, through conversational fragments, postcard transcriptions and stories, it is shaped as much by the community as by myself.”  Alan Ward

By subscribing in advance, you not only secure a copy at a reduced pre-publication price, but you will also have your name included as a supporter. You will be actively supporting the realisation of this independent, community-rooted publication – ensuring that these shared memories and everyday histories find a lasting place in print and share the story of this place to a wider audience.

The book will have 226 pages, be soft back with dust jacket. Texts by Alan Ward, Dr Corinne Painter (University of Leeds), and Lara-Marie Hägerling (University of Braunschweig). It is in French, English, and German.

Format 210 x 190 portrait. Full colour throughout with tip-in pages and a unique set of postcard artworks. UK Shipping week of 29th September.

News:

nothing remained unchanged but the clouds – in collaboration with Jeffrey Knopf and Mark Devereaux

Rogue Project Space, Manchester | 22-28 January 2025 (by appointment)

We are proud to invite you to a private viewing of Nothing remained unchanged but the clouds, a pilot exhibition at Rogue Project Space, Manchester this January.

Inspired by a project Alan Ward started in the first Covid lockdown (2020) to identify the location of a WWI German photographic negative, Nothing remained unchanged but the clouds tells the story of community, rebuilding and memory in the small French town of Grandpré in the rural Ardennes.

Using the photographic negative and subsequent collecting of German postcards written home from Grandpré, Alan established an online repository of memory and artefact, aiming to reflect the importance of the town’s local and everyday history. Growing his connections and relationships with people now living in Grandpré, Alan has gone on to undertake a series of residencies supported by the municipal council. He has created pop-up studios, scripted an alternative artist walk of the town with academics from the UK and Germany, and resident’s shared their special places, familial memories, postcard collections and ephemera.

During 2023 Alan was granted Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice funding to further explore both professional and creative partnerships with a focus on this project. He has been working with artist Jeffrey Knopf and curator Mark Devereux to examine the liminal spaces of those postcards, the cross fertilisation of art, heritage and artefact, and consider how these inform an understanding of Grandpré’s past, present and future.

This pilot exhibition represents the first presentation of this brand-new body of work we are aiming to show in future resolved exhibitions across the UK. We would like to invite you to a private viewing of this exhibition, where we will be available to share further details and stories of the project. Collectively we are keen to hear your professional responses, critique and advice on the work and next steps for this fascinating project.

Rogue Project Space
Rogue Artists Studios
4 Barrass St
Openshaw
Manchester M11 1WP

Please email or call me at: alan@alanjward.co.uk | 07980305340
to arrange a time to visit the exhibition

News:

welcome to my new revamped website

During my year of DYCP in 2023, it became clear to me that I needed to update and refresh how I presented the work I’ve been involved in. Thanks to a collaboration with Leanda Ryan – someone I’ve worked with on numerous websites, including cambridgerules1848.com – I’m delighted to have a new virtual space to which I can add work, that now allows filtering by project and topic.

Going forward, I will also be adding book design work that I complete for other artists, galleries and institutions, as I bring the other strand of my worklife’s history ‘Axis’ to a close and focus on my studio practice.

Axis Projects Publishing will now be incorporated into this site and will continue to be serviced and developed here. We are just finalising how the e-commerce aspect of that will function, but books can still be purchased here until that switches over shortly.