Peter Chassaud

Artist’s Statement

After a foundation course at Croydon and fine art painting, drawing and printmaking at Brighton, and working for many years in those media, and also writing and producing artist’s books, I have recently extended into the area of creative letterpress and typography and limited edition typographical prints. In 2009 I set up The Tom Paine Printing Press in Lewes, Sussex, where I live, to celebrate simultaneously the radical ideas of Thomas Paine (1737-1809), and the ‘art and mystery’ of letterpress printing which has been used to propagate ideas throughout the world.

I first encountered letterpress printing at school in 1959-64, when we used a couple of Arab treadle presses. Much later I briefly acquired an Arab of my own, and some 70 cases of type. I now have two hand-presses (a 19th century cast-iron Albion press and a replica of an 18^th century wooden ‘common press’), and I’m building up a stock of metal and wood type which I’m using to produce semi-abstract compositions on specific themes: Artists, Writers, Political Philosophers, Alphabet, etc. These consist of words set from ‘random’ letters, or simply individual letters, set at angles to each other on the compositor’s stone (and therefore on the resultant printed sheet), and printed in black, red, blue, etc. I use traditional letterpress printing techniques, combining the functions of compositor and printer. I do all my own typesetting, using a composing stick where necessary, and I always print on dampened hand-made or mould-made paper to obtain the best impression.

I have exhibited these prints at the Whitechapel Art Book Fair and the Small Publishers Fair, alongside my artist’s books/poetic photobooks (the most recent of these being The East London Line – An Elegiac Meta-landscape (2010)*). I have shown these poetic photobooks at the above fairs, and also at the London Artists Book Fair, the Bristol Artists Book Event (BABE), the Oxford Fine Press Book Fair and other fairs at home and abroad. For printed work I use two press names: my poetic photobooks appear under the imprint of Altazimuth Press, while my typographical works appear under The Tom Paine Printing Press. My poetic photobooks are in many national and international collections, including the British Library, National Art Library, National Railway Museum, University of the Creative Arts and Manchester Metropolitan University.

As a painter, one of my major artistic concerns is with personal visual and poetic responses to landscape – what one might call the personal mythologisation of landscape – particularly urban landscapes with which I have had a long association, especially London. Another, related, concern is with the human body and dance, expressed though life drawing and painting. I often combine figures and landscape in a single image. I work simultaneously in many media, continuing with my painting and drawing practice, and also with installation, film and other work.

In 2011 I am showing my work at the Here Gallery (Bristol, 17 March - 9 April), BABE (Arnolfini, Bristol, 30 April – 1 May), London Olympia (Book Fair, 9-11 June), Oxford Brooks (Fine Press Fair, 5-6 November), Geneva, and possibly Whitechapel (London Art Book Fair, September).

Contact details: Peter Chasseaud, email: altazimuth@talktalk.net, Tel: 01273 476265; mobile 07956 821971.

Studio 3S3, Phoenix Brighton, 10-14 Waterloo Place, Brighton BN2 9NB.

* Others include Kings Cross (2004), Thames – The London River (2005), Afghanistan – A Journey (2007), The Euston Arch (2008) and Ypres Willows (2008).

Sensitive and precise, Julia McKinlay's show at Here Gallery was a strong and striking combination of drawing and installation. Hostile Places was an exhibition of her visual research and reflections on a trip to Yellow Stone Park, and the Grand Canyon. 

Drawings and photographs from museums and research expeditions form the starting point for my work. My work explores the subjects of the animal, geology, landscape in the form of sculpture and drawings. I spent last July travelling through America hiking in the National parks and taking photographs of the extreme environments that I visited from deserts and canyons to mountains and glaciers. I was particularly interested in the geysers, fumaroles and bubbling mud pots at Yellowstone National Park, the wildlife that has adapted to live there and the structures that have formed as a result of the build up of minerals. I was fascinated by the bacteria blankets; colonies of bacteria that live in a flat, layered carpet like structure in the pools around geysers, which have incredibly intense colours.

The body of work that I have developed for this exhibition is in response to the harshness of the environment in Yellowstone, which has a unique situation on a volcanic caldera within a mountain range. Yellowstone’s altitude, the thinness of the earths crust in that area, and the channel of moisture sweeping in to the mountains from the Pacific Ocean have made it one of the most difficult places in the world for wildlife to survive. My work usually takes the form of large-scale sculptural installations, however because my focus has been details such as the colours and textures of the bacterial pools, the work is mainly in the form of drawings. I create objects that seek to combine the man-made with the organic. Gloss paint, enamel, and plastics are combined with wood, and natural fibres create a tension between the industrial and the natural.