DREAMS UNSEEN

An exhibition of Andrew Chalk’s prints and illustrations

Richard Youngs & Daniel O’Sullivan, recorded live at Bound & Infinity at an event to commemorate the exhibition

Over the past four decades Andrew Chalk has quietly produced an idiosyncratic world of music, printmaking and illustration which has rarely been seen, and only then via his domestically-run record label and publishing house: Faraway Press.

Active since 2004, Faraway Press was forced to close when the economic challenges of post-Brexit struck in 2020; a moment in which Andrew would come to question his livelihood, the geographically remote connection he kept with his contemporaries, and the channels through which his talents previously had flowed.

Andrew Chalk was born in York, England, in 1966, and initially trained in signwriting, cabinet making and textile surface pattern design. Teaching himself printmaking in the North of England, he forged a strong affinity with the British Arts and Crafts movement, industrialism, and European traditional printmaking

His formative years were spent in areas associated with these skillsets, and as the years passed by, he worked alone more and more, drifting into a rich solitude. This withdrawal from industrial modes of collective production allowed him to refine his craft, elevating it towards a unique aesthetic based entirely in the home. It was a wistful and decorative form that became the seed and inspiration for the future of Faraway Press.

Inseparably bound, Andrew’s craft is an emotional entwinement, beautifully packaged vinyls, tapes and CDs sold in limited runs via mail-order.

Since 1984 he has collaborated with a myriad of musicians, recording and performing with Mirror (Christoph Heeman, 1998 – 2005), Elodie (Timo van Luijk, 2010 – present), Circæa (Tom James Scott, Ecka Mordecai, 2015 – present) as well as a number of solo artists, a list much too long to include in this short biography.

During 2004 – 2016, Andrews’s primary audience resided in Japan, a connection that was made through his friendship with Daisuke Suzuki. The two shared interests and values, notably an appreciation for subtlety and the ways in which discreet objects can relate to everyday experiences.

In the afterglow of an era of home hi-fi listening, Daisuke and Andrew collaborated on Anglo-Japanese packaging, which would become the signature of his production during the Faraway Press years.

Working closely in this way from the home, a new world began to emerge. Composer Daniel O’Sullivan has described this music as deep wallpaper. In the space between viewer and viewed; between artwork and wallpaper, a relationship emerges in which peripheral stuff, stuff one might take for granted as merely decorative or in-the-background, takes on a new significance, enhancing the things framed, and things unframed, that give a domestic space meaning and a sense of belonging.

The decision to place this exhibition within an existing library-cum-bookshop was not accidental, and Bound & Infinity is perfect, given its focus on poetry, theosophy, and the hand-crafted arts; books that, since my first visit, shimmered gently within the imagination.

When I asked Andrew how he felt about exhibiting in the library he said, “It’s great, instead of shuffling around a white cube and looking at things and being aware you might be taking too much time, it’s relaxing to sit with tea and become a bit of the furniture.”

The works of Andrew Chalk give the impression of something emerging from a faraway and yet familiar place. R.D. Laing once wrote, “Am I amazed that something is appearing that did not exist before? That these lines did not exist on this paper until I put them there? Here we are approaching the experience of creation and of nothing.”

I feel that Laing’s statement encapsulates both the essence of Andrew’s work and the part we play encountering it. We are taken somewhere else; directly into his world and the place of our shared imagination: a place of making, sharing and getting lost in the beauty of creation.

Ecka Mordecai

From the Preface to the exhibition catalogue which is available to purchase here.