Mat Osmond
Senior Lecturer MA Illustration: Authorial Practice
Mat’s a writer and visual artist with an interest in the arts’ role in helping us to understand and confront the dominant culture’s radical unsustainability. His recent work includes an ongoing series of illustrated poetry chapbooks, Strandline Books (which won the British Museum’s 2015 Michael Marks Prize for poetry illustration), as well as image-word collaborations with the poet Em Strang (Stone, 2016) and the painter Kate Walters (The Black Madonna’s Song, 2020).
Mat regularly publishes essays that speak to entanglements of art, ecology and spirit within arts practice, including The Schoolgirl & The Drunkard, on storytelling and runaway climate change, An Underswell of Divination, on the illustrational collaborations between Ted Hughes and Leonard Baskin, and Black Light, on mass-extinction, regenerative culture and the rewilding of prayer. As part of Falmouth University’s Dark Economies research group, in 2019 Mat curated Negotiating the Surrender, a regional series of talks and workshops with Dark Mountain co-founder Dougald Hine, in support of the regenerative work of the Extinction Rebellion movement.
In 2017 Mat led a residential Art.Earth Short Course with the poet Alyson Hallett, Intimate Ecologies, which experimented with writing, drawing and improvised ritual as a means to enter into a reciprocal conversation with place. Mat’s a director of the graphic literature publisher Atlantic Press and of the Art.Earth research collective based at Dartington, where he’s currently leading a year-long series of events on the theme of Death, Dying & Change. Having regularly published his own illustration, poetry and essays with the Dark Mountain Project since its inception, in 2017 Mat acted as art editor for Issue 11 of their Dark Mountain Journal and as guest editor for In Other Tongues: a series of essays flowing out of the Art.Earth summit of the same name.
External Links
Qualifications
Qualifications
| Year | Qualification | Awarding body |
|---|---|---|
| 2006 | MA Illustration (Distinction) | University of Plymouth |
Honors and awards
| Year | Description |
|---|---|
| 2015 | Michael Marks award for Poetry Illustration |
Membership of external committees
Art.EarthResearch Interests
Research Topics
- Arts & Ecology
- Creative Writing
- Drawing
- Illustration
- Spiritual Ecology
Research Outputs
Publications and research outputs
Article
| Osmond, Mat (2019) Greenstone Axe. The Dark Mountain Project: The Devil's Door, N/A. ISSN N/A | ![[thumbnail of Essay]](https://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/style/images/fileicons/text.png) |
| Osmond, Matthew (2017) An Underswell of Divination. The Dark Mountain Project, N/A. ISSN N/A | |
| Osmond, Matthew (2016) Meinrad Craighead and the Animal Face of God. Landscape, Language and the Sublime, NA (NA). NA. ISSN NA | |
| Osmond, Matthew (2015) Us and Them: Empathy, Ecocide and the Graphic Ecofable. Politics of Place, Issue 3 (Green Connections), 2500 words (approx) (3\7). ISSN http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/politicsofplace/files/2012/02/2015WinterPOP_OSMOND.pdf | |
| Osmond, Matthew (2014) The Mingled Measure. The Mingled Measure: Interpreting and Adapting ST Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 8 (2). | |
Book Section
| Osmond, Matthew (2018) Anima #5. In: The Black Madonna's Song. Atlantic Press, Penryn, Cornwall. ISBN N/A | |
| Scott, Tom (2016) Circus. In: From The Chellew Room. Hovel Press, Falmouth, pp. 28-31. ISBN 9780995606602 | |
Conference or Workshop Item
| Osmond, Matthew and Strang, Emma (2016) Stone. In: Stone, March 2016, Atlantic Press, Falmouth. | ![[thumbnail of Illustrated Poetry Chapbook]](https://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/style/images/fileicons/other.png) |
Book
| Shuttle, Penelope, Carver, Caroline, Scott, Tom and Osmond, Matthew (2016) Poems from the Chellew Room. Hovel Press, Falmouth. ISBN 9780995605602 Item not available from this repository. |
| Strang, Em and Osmond, Matthew (2016) Stone. Atlantic Press Poetry . Atlantic Press Ltd, Penryn, Cornwall. ISBN 978-0-9571549-7-1 | ![[thumbnail of Stone E (cleaned).jpg]](http://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/2452/1/Stone%20E%20%28cleaned%29.jpg) ![[thumbnail of Stone F (cleaned).jpg]](http://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/2452/2/Stone%20F%20%28cleaned%29.jpg) |
| Montag, Daro, Adams, Clive, Holden, Patrick and Lascelles, Bruce (2016) Soil Culture: Bringing the Arts down to Earth. CCANW & Gaia Books, Dartington, Devon. ISBN 978-0-9932192-1-4 |
Exhibition
Loydell, Rupert  ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2730-8489, Osmond, Matthew, Walters, Kate, Cave, Sarah, Thompson, Luke, White, Rupert, Florence, Penny, Gillespie, Sarah, Sparkes, Sarah, Kerr, Lucy, Carter, Jim, Bloomer, Paul, Wrigley, Minami and Lorenz, Karen (2019) Notes in the Garden. [Exhibition] | ![[thumbnail of exhibition publicity image]](http://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/3375/1/20190823_190914.jpg) |
Conference
| Osmond, Matthew, Povall, Richard, Leahy, Mark and Nelson, Camilla (2016) Language, Landscape and the Sublime. [Conference] |
| Montag, Daro, Osmond, Matthew and Allen, Jude (2014) Soil Culture Forum. [Conference] | ![[thumbnail of _MG_6828.JPG]](http://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/667/2/_MG_6828.JPG) |
| Heholt, Ruth ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6427, Lockley, Elfrea, Douglas, Mark, Downing, Niamh and North, Laurence ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6578-1771 (2014) Haunted Landscapes: Nature, Supernature and the Environment. [Conference] | |
Other
| Osmond, Matthew (2015) Fly Sings. UNSPECIFIED. | |
Events
Borrowed Time: on death, dying & change: https://borrowed-time.info/
Teaching
Courses taught
- Illustration: Authorial Practice MA
- Illustration BA(Hons)
- Drawing BA(Hons)
- Architecture BA(Hons)
Policy engagement within Cornwall
Engagement with organisations which contribute to the development of educational, cultural or socio-economic policies in Cornwall
Falmouth Poetry Group
Extinction Rebellion
