Ashley Ashford-Brown. Les cordes du temps

The Strings of Time, Paris, Éditions Lord Byron, 2025

First edition
Edition of 800 copies
Hardcover, 24 x 30 cm, 128 pages
Bilingual edition: French, English
Translations by Christopher Jones and Fabien Courtal
ISBN: 978-2-491901-97-4

The Strings of Time is the first monograph retracing the last thirty years of the career and work of Franco-British painter Ashley Ashford-Brown.
Produced under the artistic direction of Christine Ollier, the publication is supported by the Centre for the Study of Linguistic and Literary Contacts and Relations (CERCLL, University of Picardie-Jules-Verne, Amiens) and the Cultural Centre La Laverie in La Ferté-Bernard.

“Ashley’s canvases are not paintings. They do not represent the world, nor do they imitate it—artifice and artifact—they *are* world. Ashley Ashford-Brown’s gesture is not pictorial, it is demiurgic.” (Excerpt from Christian Michel’s essay)

Born in Salisbury in 1948, Ashley Ashford-Brown was raised near Stonehenge. He has lived in France since the 1960s and settled in the Perche region in 2019. Arriving in France penniless, he undertook various experiments to replace traditional paint, a rather expensive material at the time. The discovery of Tàpies and other material-focused artists encouraged him in this direction. White cement quickly became the foundation of his artistic approach. The artist draws inspiration from Celtic civilizations, Aboriginal Australian culture, and prehistoric cave art such as that of Chauvet and Lascaux, in a quest to return to the origins of art, often associated with shamanism. Working outside traditional academic pathways, the artist has exhibited his work in France since the late 1970s, in galleries and art centers such as Galerie Claudine Legrand and Galerie Europia in Paris, Espace Julio Gonzalez in Arcueil, and the Maison d’Art Bernhard Anthonioz in Nogent-sur-Marne. He has also shown internationally, including in Belgium, Spain, Syria, Jordan, China, and the United States.

Born in 1967, Christian Michel is an art historian with a doctorate in General and Comparative Literature under the supervision of Jean-Pierre Morel. He holds the agrégation in Modern Literature and is a former student of the École Normale Supérieure of Fontenay-Saint-Cloud. He is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Picardie-Jules-Verne, where he teaches General and Comparative Literature as well as Film History and Aesthetics. He is also a member of the Centre for the Study of Linguistic and Literary Contacts and Relations (CERCLL) in Amiens. Among his various publications, one may note Poétique de l’analogie (H. H. Jahnn, W. Faulkner, C. Simon), published by Garnier Classiques in 2013, and Catherine Poncin. L’Empreinte de la photographie, published by Filigranes Editions in 2022.