Keith Tyson March 15, 2010

Ox-Tales: artists brave the elements for Oxfam auction

Peter Blake, Antony Gormley and Maggi Hambling are among 14 famous artists who have created original artworks for a new set of book boxes, set to be auctioned at the Saatchi Gallery tomorrow in aid of Oxfam

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Produced in a run of 150 copies, the limited-edition box set contains four books bound in a solander box
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — The books are signed by all 38 authors – including Kate Atkinson, Helen Fielding, Ian Rankin and Joanna Trollope
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Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Craigie Aitchison was the first artist to be asked to create a book box for the project. This design was one of the last things he worked on before his death on 21 December 2009
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Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Terry Danziger Miles, director of the Timothy Taylor Gallery says: '[Aitchison] had been very excited about being involved and desperately wanted to complete the work. Sadly, he was unable to ... a studio technician finished the remainder of the box in his chosen colours'
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Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Keith Tyson's 'nature painting'
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Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Tyson says of his work: 'I have called them nature paintings, not because they are paintings of nature, but rather they are paintings by nature'
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Gavin Turk's Egg Box
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Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Turk says: 'The egg has always permeated my work – it is a kind of house/signature/logo for me. Architecturally, the egg confounds as it is simultaneously a wall and a door'
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Four Elements Box by Joe Tilson
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Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Tilson says: 'The first step for me in 1970 and 71 was to begin the project of the four elements: fire, air, earth and water. They are, and always will be, the four elements of imaginative experience'
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Blackbird by Humphrey Ocean
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Ocean says: 'It is a painting of a blackbird landing in my garden in the January snowfall that also brought less common visitors such as the redwing and fieldfare. But, offhand, it is difficult to think of a lovelier presence or sound than the blackbird'
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Richard Long's River Avon
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Long says: 'My work is a water drawing: I poured River Avon muddy water down the front of the box to make an instantaneous gravitational image'
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Peter Blake's Air, Fire, Earth, Water. 'I simply wanted to use the four words,' says Blake
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Can't Breathe Without You by Rachel Howard
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Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Howard chose to create a painting of an inhaler to illustrate the complete works of Anne Sexton, Can't Breathe Without You. She says: 'One dark night a man arrived on my doorstep with a box. He told me how books live and breathe. He left, and I made my box'
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Wave Box by Maggi Hambling. 'Just as art feeds the spirit, I hope that this auction will feed a million mouths as well. Since 2003, my subject has been the action of the waves of the North Sea. Each one as it rises, crashes and returns, is a potent metaphor for the cycle of life'
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Subodh Gupta's Relax and Read
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Gupta says: 'Sometimes when you're relaxing, you put your drink on the book like a coaster. It's not disrespectful. I love being surrounded by books and food and it's a natural relationship that is formed among the three'
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Michael Craig-Martin's Book Box
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Craig-Martin: 'I have always been interested in objects, and objects in relation to images. The simple beautiful box I was sent, covered in a canvas-like fabric, asked to be turned into a painting, so I did'
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Mat Collishaw's Insecticide Box
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Collishaw says: 'My box contains six small insecticide prints viewable through the frame of an old daguerreotype. I reduced them so they are the size of the original butterflies. It's an intimate memento of the macabre nature of early photography: the very human desire to flatten the world into two dimensions'
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Lost Subject by Antony Gormley
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Gormley: 'Whether we are directly responsible (as in the case of climate-change refugees) or indirectly (in relation to commodity wars or the breakdown of social order), Oxfam provides a way in which we can at least try to make those changed lives better'
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Oxfam Ox-Tales — Time Box by John Hoyland
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Oxfam: Ox-Tales — Hoyland: 'I'm quite a lazy person and don't like washing up ... As my brushes dry and solidify, I sometimes feel a pang of guilt for their fate. Finding them a permanent home is like a small memorial, a sarcophagus, a happy send-off into another life'
Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk

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