Art and Travel Collide in The Jaunt

Curator Jeroen Smeets decided to fuse art and travel in order to create The Jaunt, a book which collates material collected by artists during a set of trips around the world, which were designed to let them experience new destinations and draw inspiration from them.

The project began in 2013, with Smeets aiming to bring two of his biggest passions, art and travel, together in one project. He selected a group of artists and proposed individual trips to destinations they had never visited before. Upon their return, 50 copies of the work they produced were printed and put up for sale in order to fund the project. Jaunt has been a great success so far, with 13 artists having made trips away, and around half of them completely selling out their work.

Smeets asked the artists to keep their sketches and photos from their trips, which he has now published in The Jaunt book. “The book captures the first 10 trips of our project, and follows the creative process of the artists on their trips. We have exclusive interviews with the artists talking about their destination, what they’ve done and how it inspired them,” he said.

The book launched March 26 at the Beach Gallery in London and has been widely acclaimed. It is no easy task giving such a varied collection of material a coherent direction, but you can see the results by buying a copy from the project website.