Where dreams take shape

The question of what artists actually get up to in their studios has always intrigued the rest of us — that mysterious alchemical process of transforming base materials into gold, or at least into something marketable in the present volatile art world. Today’s studio might as likely be a laptop as laboratory, factory, hangar or garden shed, but is nevertheless an apt prism through which to explore the notion of creativity, and this boldly ambitious volume does just that, interviewing 120 British artists in a freewheeling way about their practice and process, inspiration and ideas.

Sanctuary pays tribute to Private View, that inimitable portrait by John Russell, Bryan Robertson and Lord Snowdon of the 1960s British art scene, which was in those days still possible to encompass in vibrant detail in a volume of reasonable dimensions. Since then things have spiralled almost out of control, and Sanctuary dispenses with the curators, critics and connoisseurs that stalk its predecessor’s pages, to focus on a somewhat idiosyncratic selection of artists.