Alan Ward’s artistic practice is grounded in over thirty years of experience as a book designer for artists, galleries, and art-house publishers, since relocating to Manchester in the early 1990s. This background in the visual and material language of the book has deeply informed his approach to image-making and narrative structure. Alongside this work, he sustained a personal photographic practice – often realised through artist books – until, in 2013, he made a conscious decision to place his own artistic work at the forefront. This shift has led to an expanded practice encompassing photography, video, text, and public art.
His projects are frequently driven by research and engagement, whether through historical investigation or collaboration with communities. Archives – both personal and institutional – serve as critical departure points, opening up reflections on how narratives, identities, and memories are constructed, contested, and shared.
Ward is drawn to the unexpected: the overlooked detail, the associative link, the oblique observation. His work often brings these elements together to propose alternative readings of place, history, and experience. In the spirit of W.G. Sebald, he seeks to open a quiet but insistent discourse around ‘the transience of all human things’, and how the memory of place anchors our sense of self.
Collaboration is not peripheral to his practice – it is central. Ward values the reciprocity of engagement and is committed to creating opportunities for people to voice their perspectives through participatory processes. Facilitating this kind of exchange is a key outcome of his work.
Photographically, he is attentive to the ‘infra-ordinary’ – the subtle, often ignored details of our geographies. His work has been described as “a poetic and quiet consideration of our place in the landscape.” This sensibility extends to his skillful integration of image and text, most notably through the artist books and publications that accompany many of his projects and commissions.
In 2023, with support from an Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice grant, Ward explored new visual and collaborative strategies through the project La Vojo Returne. This followed previous ACE Project Grant support for Photographs from Another Place.
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Currently:
Developing a new body of work through engagement with the small town of Grandpré in France, using a collection of postcards of the town gathered during and after Covid pandemic lockdown. The project is titled La Vojo Returne and is being edited for exhibition and publication.
Recent touring exhibition and commissions:
Photographs from Another Place @ The Hostry, Norwich Cathedral 3-26 November 2022.
A major exhibition and publication after a long-term photographic research project based around a collection of re-discovered 1920s glass negatives purchased from eBay. The exhibition originally showed at the Williamson Art Gallery & Museum in December 2019 – February 2020.
‘Memory and Identity’ December 2022, Cista Arts, London, online group show. 2 works from La Vojo Returne project development.
Pass! Shoot!! Goal!!! May 2022. A commission by, and exhibited at Touchstones Rochdale, after completing a six month community engagement in collaboration with artist Neville Gabie around the first commercially written song about football recorded by Gracie Fields.
#I_Am_Clarion September 2021, explored Socialism and its communal bond within the Clarion cycling movement, it is a declaration of identity. Commissioned by Mid Pennine Arts as part of their wider Pendle Radicals programme.
He completed a major public art commission Cambridge Rules 1848 in 2020, with Neville Gabie for Cambridge City Council, to commemorate the role of Parker’s Piece as the birthplace of the 1848 Cambridge Rules, which helped establish the modern game of football. Originally titled Written in stone / interpreted worldwide / brought back to Cambridge, they delivered both a permanent marker on Parker’s Piece, a digital on-line archive, and shared pieces of the sculpture in an international cultural exchange with five locations around the World including Brazil’s Maracanã stadium.
Other work features in Breaking Ground a publication from an artist residency at the abandoned football ground of Bradford Park Avenue. This book, designed by Ward, was the first ever crowd-funded artist book to be shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, in 2017. He also completed an Ex(s)ports European arts commission, again with Gabie, in conjunction with the KAA Gent Ladies football team in Belgium.
In 2014, Citizen Manchester a two year artist residency with Dan Dubowitz at Manchester Central Library during its refurbishment, culminated in an exhibition of interventions at both the Central Library and Manchester Art Gallery. Commissioned by Manchester City Council and the developer Laing O’Rourke, a Manchester University Press coffee-table publication accompanied the exhibition (designed by Ward).