Weeks 24 to 26 - My Floor is My Plate!

Summary of my work so far:

Having taken delivery of a huge quantity of flooring lino, I have revisited my initial etching process started way back last October. This time, the floor itself is my plate - I am not copying images, copying cracks etc. Instead I am directly marking, scratching, taping, wax dripping onto the floor and etching with the same caustic soda and wall paper paste recipe as before.  My domestic theme and dialogue with process have become my prints, using domestic materials to make the plates.

I am using Hosho Japanese paper for the prints, with the lino and paper sized to be the maximum that will fit on the largest flat-bed printer in the workshop. The registration is complex, and calculations are required for sizes so the paper does not get stuck in the rollers. The pressure of the rollers has had to be adjusted to get a balance between intensity of ink and prevention of paper creasing. 

In effect, there is a tension set up between the incompatibilities of materials, pushing them all to their limits. The printer is designed for intaglio, not relief printing, which is why there is a tendency for the paper to crease; the Japanese paper is a rather beautiful expensive rarefied paper made for delicate multi-block wood cuts, yet my plate is a mass produced modern flooring material, as popular now as it was in the 1950's; and I am sloshing liquid Bitumen and caustic soda over the plates, in contrast to the controlled and precise methods used in cutting Japanese wood blocks.

The prints themselves, in black and white, (black ink on white paper), resemble wood cuts, yet the scale and shape of the marks, both the jagged and the gestural, would be impossible to achieve in wood. Hence there is a curiosity about their making. There is a reference to 1950's abstract expressionists, such as Franz Kline and Hans Hartung and indeed Kline’s use of scaling up sections of drawings has been used in some of the prints.  (See the sketch book page of thumbnail images of the kitchen). They also echo the imagery used in Russian Constructivist architecture (Tatlin’s Tower – Monument to the Third International) and Constructivist agitprop art with their forceful diagonal lines. By using a roll of paper, they reference banners, newspaper printing, mass media, multiple copies, whilst interrogating the genre and technology of the printmaking medium.

The images are made as a series of diptychs, working quickly on two images at once, so there is both a sense of dynamism and a narrative between the pairs. As a series they become filmic, alluding to landscapes or views seen from within or from outside; trapped in a cage or looking into the enclosure. The use of jagged cut tape together with layers of stamped on circular shapes or gestural brush strokes, once etched obscure each other, with glimpses of marks emerging ghost like from behind others and the overall prints being palimpsestic.

The black and white evokes light and shadow and the Japanese theme is continued with a reference to the writing of the Japanese author Tanizaki's "In Praise of Shadows" and his descriptions of the importance of light and shadow in Japanese architecture. 

The large scale of these images has meant I have had to move to a different form and scale of mark making. No longer are they made up of small tiled squares of lino, yet they still have an intimacy about them. The indeterminacy of acid etching results in images that can be examined close up, yet they retain a boldness when viewed from a distance. The deeply etched lino itself becomes a sculpture,  both when flat and when rolled, transformed from its origins and providing a further meaning of the work; a multivalency.

So, I am now working on perfecting the printing process, deciding on whether to have thick black marks from the press, or softer marks using less pressure, or even using hand burnishing with a barren, so they have more of a wood cut quality. To achieve the darker prints, I am changing to oil based ink with varying amounts of extender and drying retarder to prevent the plates drying out before I have finished inking them. I have made six plates, each 950mm wide (the paper width) by approximately 1 metre long (and may make more).

My work this year started with an investigation into craft, process and transformation, together with its documentation and combined with studies of the everyday, building, the domestic environment and areas usually overlooked or, (in my work as an architect) covered up. This involvement with domestic architecture and process have become my prints, the domestic materials my plates, and now on a larger scale than previously, they almost become part of the built environment themselves.

Below are a series of photos documenting the making of these prints: