...
...
Accidental Journey
A Farmer's Almanac
Surface of
... Last Scatter
Song of Childhood
Twenty-Seven
... Kilometres
Darkness
Tailspin
Endlessness
Feuilleton

Endlessness, 2020
Book in 4-colour offset lithography
[click on the image to see more]

Eindhoven: Peter Foolen Editions, 2020
4-colour offset lithography
96 pages, hardcover, 23 x 17 cm
Printed by robstolk, Amsterdam
Bound by Van Waarden, Zaandam, NL
Edition of 350
ISBN 978-94-90673-28-4
£15 / €17 / $20

Available from Peter Foolen Editions, or in person at bookartbookshop (London), Boekie Woekie (Amsterdam), PrintRoom (Rotterdam)

[Photograph—Peter Foolen / Image—Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)]

Endlessness (2020) is an artist book that takes Scott’s expedition to the Antarctic in 1910–13 as its starting point. Through facts, borrowed text, new and found images, Endlessness retells this journey, while a series of visual and written ‘interludes’ open up a more speculative narrative on solitude, interiority, and vision.

The book is based around a pair of skis used on the expedition, which belonged to one of the younger members of Scott’s Polar Party, Apsley Cherry-Garrard and are carved with his initials, most likely by the man himself. The skis—now at the Royal Geographical Society in London—are reproduced at actual scale, and run across several pages as a visual nod to Cherry-Garrard’s physical ordeals in the Antarctic and a reminder that to live life to the full is to find a balance between the corporeal and the reach of our imagination.

The book also mulls over the uncertainties of vision. Cherry-Garrard was profoundly myopic, photographs showing him habitually wearing metal-rimmed spectacles. These would have frozen to his face if worn outside during the expedition so for much of the time he would have been operating with minimal sight. As a show of distant solidarity, Tim O'Riley uses his own optical prescription for astigmatism to structure ‘graphical fields’ that punctuate the book.

Endlessness was produced with generous support from the Elephant Trust, the Gane Trust, and the Royal College of Art, and the kind permissions of many, including the Royal Geographical Society.