Ox-Tales: artists brave the elements for Oxfam auction

Produced in a run of 150 copies, the limited-edition box set contains four books bound in a solander box Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk The books are signed by all 38 authors – including Kate Atkinson, Helen Fielding, Ian Rankin and Joanna Trollope Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Craigie Aitchison was the first artist to be asked to create a book box for the project. This design was one of the last things he worked on before his death on 21 December 2009 Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Terry Danziger Miles, director of the Timothy Taylor Gallery says: '[Aitchison] had been very excited about being involved and desperately wanted to complete the work. Sadly, he was unable to ... a studio technician finished the remainder of the box in his chosen colours' Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Keith Tyson 's 'nature painting' Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Tyson says of his work: 'I have called them nature paintings, not because they are paintings of nature, but rather they are paintings by nature' Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Gavin Turk 's Egg Box Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Turk says: 'The egg has always permeated my work – it is a kind of house/signature/logo for me. Architecturally, the egg confounds as it is simultaneously a wall and a door' Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Four Elements Box by Joe Tilson Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Tilson says: 'The first step for me in 1970 and 71 was to begin the project of the four elements: fire, air, earth and water. They are, and always will be, the four elements of imaginative experience' Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Blackbird by Humphrey Ocean Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Ocean says: 'It is a painting of a blackbird landing in my garden in the January snowfall that also brought less common visitors such as the redwing and fieldfare. But, offhand, it is difficult to think of a lovelier presence or sound than the blackbird' Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Richard Long 's River Avon Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Long says: 'My work is a water drawing: I poured River Avon muddy water down the front of the box to make an instantaneous gravitational image' Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Peter Blake 's Air, Fire, Earth, Water. 'I simply wanted to use the four words,' says Blake Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Can't Breathe Without You by Rachel Howard Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Howard chose to create a painting of an inhaler to illustrate the complete works of Anne Sexton, Can't Breathe Without You. She says: 'One dark night a man arrived on my doorstep with a box. He told me how books live and breathe. He left, and I made my box' Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Wave Box by Maggi Hambling . 'Just as art feeds the spirit, I hope that this auction will feed a million mouths as well. Since 2003, my subject has been the action of the waves of the North Sea. Each one as it rises, crashes and returns, is a potent metaphor for the cycle of life' Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Subodh Gupta 's Relax and Read Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Gupta says: 'Sometimes when you're relaxing, you put your drink on the book like a coaster. It's not disrespectful. I love being surrounded by books and food and it's a natural relationship that is formed among the three' Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Michael Craig-Martin 's Book Box Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Craig-Martin: 'I have always been interested in objects, and objects in relation to images. The simple beautiful box I was sent, covered in a canvas-like fabric, asked to be turned into a painting, so I did' Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Mat Collishaw 's Insecticide Box Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Collishaw says: 'My box contains six small insecticide prints viewable through the frame of an old daguerreotype. I reduced them so they are the size of the original butterflies. It's an intimate memento of the macabre nature of early photography: the very human desire to flatten the world into two dimensions' Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Lost Subject by Antony Gormley Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Gormley: 'Whether we are directly responsible (as in the case of climate-change refugees) or indirectly (in relation to commodity wars or the breakdown of social order), Oxfam provides a way in which we can at least try to make those changed lives better' Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Time Box by John Hoyland Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk Hoyland: 'I'm quite a lazy person and don't like washing up ... As my brushes dry and solidify, I sometimes feel a pang of guilt for their fate. Finding them a permanent home is like a small memorial, a sarcophagus, a happy send-off into another life' Photograph: PR Photograph: guardian.co.uk