Artist: Alastair Noble, UK

Work: Magellan and ‘where the cloves grow’

The ten landmark moments in Magellan’s epic voyage around the world were plotted out after the voyage within what is known as the Agnese Portolan Atlas 1544 drawn up by the Italian cartographer Battista Agnese. This will be the premise for my artist’s book.

This artist’s book will consist of a series of ten unbound folios that when opened will contain printed sections of portolan charts and each will contain a folded paper boat. The front of the closed folio will be stamped on the front with a date that corresponds to those significant moments identified by Agnese on his map. Following the chronology of the voyage from the day the fleet of five ships set sail from Sanlucar de Barrameda 20 Sept 1519 to the return of the single surviving ship to Spain in 6 Sept 1522. The paper boats within the folios will reduce in size to correspond with the loss of the ships throughout the voyage from five to the sole surviving ship. Hence the last and tenth boat in the folio will be one-fifth the size of the first. Within the paper boats a message will be inserted that reflects quotes from the commentary of the journey written by Pigafetta, one of the few survivors to historic circumnavigation. His narrative is entitled ‘Navigation and discovery of Upper India and the Isles of Molucca where the cloves grow’.

The dimensions of folded folios will be (300 x 128mm) and will be housed in a wooden document box (355x133x133mm). This box set will be produced in an edition of 10. The price of this box set will be 152.20 GBP.
These folios not only reflect the passage of this momentous journey but the work pays homage to Magellan and also the legacy that he left behind with those that charted the world based on his discoveries.

10 Folios contained in HMP sleeve pages laser printed on 100% cotton paper mounted on blue, unbound in individual folios made from Arches paper.

Size (in cm) height: 31.75 width: 21.60
Edition of 5
Retail price: £250.00
Publisher: Gnōbilis Press

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I am an environmental artist and book artist. My artistic practice is a response to architecture and the natural environment, and reflects on particular projects in the context of poetry and literature. The writings of poets, authors and philosophers such as Mallarmé, Marinetti, Mayakovsky, Wittgenstein and Poe have been the genesis of numerous works in the past. The language games invented by Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges, evident in his short narrative the “On the Exactitude of Science,” have been the stimulus for many works. The latter text I have transposed into a series of environmental interventions entitled Mapping Arcadia: these are investigations into alternative methods of mapping the landscape. This project and numerous others have been transformed into artist books that reflect aspects of the landscape interventions.

CONTACTS

Email:anoble1954@gmail.com

Website:  www.arnoble.com/

Here is a selection of images of works in the exhibition. Scroll down this page for comprehensive individual Artist submissions, including descriptions of their work, more images, artists’ statements and contact details.