All The Sunflowers in ‘Odour’, curated by Rowan Corkhill, Electro Studios, Saint Leonard’s-On-Sea, July 2026

All The Sunflowers, 2025 artist’s book. Three interpretations each showing two editions of the 2021 book intertwined back to front 

All The Sunflowers, 2021, artist’s book

The Spots That Never Went, exhibition view, Photofusion, London 2021
All The Sunflowers, with Vincent van Gogh, ongoing
Framed works, 2026; Postcard set, 2025; Artist’s book, 2021
All The Sunflowers is an ongoing experiment, which began in 2017, in erasure and
appropriation as well an investigation into the sculptural qualities of a
book and the possibility of a book to take on unexpected new life
forms.
It’s also an exploration in reproduction, in the potential of copies of copies becoming original artworks in their own right.
Vincent van Gogh painted seven sunflowers paintings in Arles over the period 1888-1889. These included three painted copies of two of the sunflowers paintings. I collated copies of these seven paintings in book form, with individual paintings facing a page illustrated by a single colour picked from the artwork.
I subsequently cut out all flowers by hand using a scalpel – all the sunflowers gone. In their layered, hollowed-out form, the modified paintings become three-dimensional, each visually dependent on the others.
Fixed to the wall, the hollowed out pages create shadow flowers, which I have fixed creating lumen prints working with sunlight and black and white darkroom paper.
The book and a lumen print were included in the 2021 solo show The Spots That Never Went at Photofusion, London, as part of a triptych responding to personal memories of the 1980s AIDS crisis.
A set of seven postcards was published in 2025 and shows photographs of two editions of the 2021 book intertwined back to front, creating seven new interpretations of the sunflowers works, here bringing to the foreground unique colours picked from each of the seven sunflowers paintings.
Available from Negative Press at https://www.neg-press.com/product/all-the-sunflowers-roelof-bakker
All the Sunflowers, postcard set in handmade paper sleeve with sunflowers reproduction to inner and a single colour picked from one sunflowers painting to exterior. Edition of 20 in multiple colour sleeves. Published December 2025.
All The Sunflowers, handcut artist’s book, 210mm x 280mm, 14pp, edition of 7, 2021.
The artwork of the 2021 All The Sunflowers book was featured on the cover of the Book Arts Newsletter No.149, November 2022.
It’s also an exploration in reproduction, in the potential of copies of copies becoming original artworks in their own right.
Vincent van Gogh painted seven sunflowers paintings in Arles over the period 1888-1889. These included three painted copies of two of the sunflowers paintings. I collated copies of these seven paintings in book form, with individual paintings facing a page illustrated by a single colour picked from the artwork.
I subsequently cut out all flowers by hand using a scalpel – all the sunflowers gone. In their layered, hollowed-out form, the modified paintings become three-dimensional, each visually dependent on the others.
Fixed to the wall, the hollowed out pages create shadow flowers, which I have fixed creating lumen prints working with sunlight and black and white darkroom paper.
The book and a lumen print were included in the 2021 solo show The Spots That Never Went at Photofusion, London, as part of a triptych responding to personal memories of the 1980s AIDS crisis.
A set of seven postcards was published in 2025 and shows photographs of two editions of the 2021 book intertwined back to front, creating seven new interpretations of the sunflowers works, here bringing to the foreground unique colours picked from each of the seven sunflowers paintings.
Available from Negative Press at https://www.neg-press.com/product/all-the-sunflowers-roelof-bakker
All the Sunflowers, postcard set in handmade paper sleeve with sunflowers reproduction to inner and a single colour picked from one sunflowers painting to exterior. Edition of 20 in multiple colour sleeves. Published December 2025.
All The Sunflowers, handcut artist’s book, 210mm x 280mm, 14pp, edition of 7, 2021.
The artwork of the 2021 All The Sunflowers book was featured on the cover of the Book Arts Newsletter No.149, November 2022.
WORK︎︎︎ NEXT ︎︎︎