A debut monograph from landscape painter Jen Orpin, exploring motorway bridges, underpasses and the quiet infrastructure of our journeys as metaphors for memory, loss and connection.
Following the loss of her father in 2015, Orpin spent three months travelling weekly between Manchester and Surrey. The roads, junctions and bridges she passed became landmarks of grief and reflection — and, over the years that followed, the subject of a body of work that has resonated far beyond her own story. With no human figures in the paintings, the work leaves space for viewers to project their own journeys, memories and losses onto these liminal, overlooked places.
Bringing together eight years of paintings exhibited widely, alongside new creative writing and reader responses, The Architecture of Connection is published to coincide with the tenth anniversary of her father's passing and Orpin's acclaimed solo show of the same name. Designed by celebrated graphic designer Malcolm Garret, this is a tender, beautifully crafted first book about the roads that carry us through transition — physical and emotional alike.
About the Author :
Artist: Jen Orpin (b. 1974, Surrey) is a Manchester-based artist who studied at Manchester Metropolitan University (BA, 1996) and has maintained a full-time painting practice at Rogue Artists' Studios since 2000. She's a Member of Manchester Academy of Fine Art, co-founded Rogue Women in 2019 (now curating its fifth exhibition), and founded A Small Space Artist Collective, organising shows across the UK.
Orpin has exhibited widely across the Uk and Europe and has been shortlisted for numerous open competitions, including the Jackson's Painting Prize, New Light Art Prize, ING Discerning Eye, Wells Art Contemporary, Wales Open, London Group Open, and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
Designer: Malcolm Garrett MBE is one of Britain's most celebrated graphic designers, best known for his iconic record sleeves for Buzzcocks, Magazine, Simple Minds and Duran Duran in the late 1970s and '80s. A Royal Designer for Industry and co-founder of the annual Design Manchester festival, he was awarded an MBE in 2020 for services to design. Malcolm's design for The Architecture of Connection brings decades of award-winning craft to Jen Orpin's deeply personal body of work.
