Chris Drury
Edge of Chaos

A beautiful, definitive and limited-edition monograph on the prolific environmental artist, with an exclusive collector’s print

  • 268 of 300
    copies remaining in edition
  • $375.00

Overview

From the biosystems of the human body to the ecosystems of the planet, from the smallest fungi and mycelium to the largest trees, landscapes and their bounty of natural materials, Chris Drury’s creative practice has celebrated a symbiotic relationship between the microcosmic and macrocosmic through an environmental lens for over five decades. Drury’s awe-inspiring works, brought together for the first time in this stunning publication, are wide-ranging, explorative and ambitious in scope. He has worked with established institutions and small communities worldwide to create architectural works, land drawings, suspended works and murals in earth pigments, as well as collaborating with scientists, doctors and technicians to create marvellous works on paper, photographs and videos.

With its focus on one of the most important environmental artists alive today, Chris Drury: Edge of Chaos is a landmark publication that captures the true art of nature and spans a life devoted to the nature of art. A collection, a manifesto and a plea for understanding our delicate ecosystems, the book’s content and message will stir the heart and the mind with the beauty, diversity and celebration of our planet and the life within it.

This edition is limited to 300 copies and only available on Volume.

Author

Chris Drury

Genre

Land Art

Specification

280 x 220 mm
304 pages
Swiss-bound book
Clamshell case, covered in real cloth
Tipped-on image
Signed print
Two paper stocks
Collector‘s edition limited to 300 copies

The book

With detailed direction from Chris Drury himself and an introduction by Kate Soper, the book is organised into thematic chapters aligned with the artist’s practise and the types of works he has made over his long career.

The book begins with the key work, Edge of Chaos, which looks at complexity theory in relation to our climate and our own bodies, before moving on to chapters presenting large woven works, camera-obscura cloud chambers, systems in the body related to systems on the planet, the vortex as energy and culminating in life, death and regeneration in relation to fungi. Each chapter features hand drawings, plans and writings, together with images of works made in situ.

At a critical time of climate change, with planetary breakdown of natural systems and species loss, Edge of Chaos is an aptly named and compelling view on our world through art.

The book itself is Swiss bound and cased within a clamshell box. A special signed print of one of Drury’s artworks is in an envelope within the box, alongside the book. The book is quarter-bound in a suitably earthy-coloured real cloth, with a beautiful tactile paper front board. The image is printed in black ink, with typography in black foil blocking.

Nature simply is and it is everywhere, you don’t have to go to a wilderness to experience nature – your own nature is nature, but we experience it as something other, outside of ourselves.

Chris Drury

Chris Drury’s ‘Mushroom Cloud’ [at Borgo Valsugana in Italy ] is composed of about 3,000 dried mushrooms strung on fishing line and upward lit to magical effect

The New York Times

The prints

For this groundbreaking publication, Chris Drury has produced a highly limited and collectible set of 300 prints, each unique. Measuring 27.5 x 21.5 cm, these works are about earth, ground, fungi and what lies beneath our feet, directly connecting with the book’s last chapter, ‘Transformation’.

To produce the artworks, Drury buried individual sheets of paper in the ground, which will be excavated and dried. Six different screens of mushroom spore prints, which are produced by cutting off the stem of a mushroom and leaving it on a piece of paper for at least six hours. The spores drop onto the paper in the pattern of the mushroom gills, which are secured with artist fixative and scanned to be printed.

Drury uses ochre earth pigments, Chaga mushroom dust, Ink Cap ink and other organic materials, mixed into a medium, to print. The combination of different substrates, processes, materials and inks produces colours that vary from black to red and yellow ochres and a set of truly unique prints, each of which is signed and numbered.

Video by 2wordsvideo

The Edge of Chaos represents microcosm and macrocosm – using patterns within our own hearts and in the movement of water within trees and connecting these to global weather patterns. But this is not just pattern, it links the systems in our bodies to systems on the planet.

Chris Drury

Meet the author

Chris Drury is an eco-artist who has been making sculptures directly in the landscape for over forty-five years, using materials to hand and referencing the human culture of a particular place. He has collaborated with scientists, medics, museums and indigenous cultures to make works on the land, installations and video projections inside, as well as works on paper using earth pigments, maps and mushroom spore prints. He has sought to make connections between different phenomena in the world, specifically between nature and culture, inner and outer, and microcosm and macrocosm. What is created arises from and is dependent on its context, diverse and complex, and aesthetically beautiful.