Friday, 6 November 2015

Preparing for Open Studios 2015

I'm going big this time....I've been etching a 2 metre by 2 metre piece of floor lino. Printed it with a lawn roller for showing at the open studios.

Please come to Studio 37, B204
Chocolate Factory, Clarendon Road N22 6XJPrivate View Friday 13th November 6 - 9pmSaturday 14th & Sunday 15th 12 - 6pm


Getting ready to print the floor.

Sunday, 25 October 2015

New Project - extra large lino print

I've wanted to etch a huge sheet of lino for some time now - printing it with a lawn roller as it wouldn't fit in to even the largest available press. 

With very little time available I have decided to carry out this ligistical nightmare in time for the Chocolate Factory Open Studios in November.



I've collected my rolls of floor lino - I want a piece at least 2 metres x 2 metres.

















   

Building up my image as the first stage in acid resist.












Drawing my inspiration from landscapes but still keeping my work abstract.

The acid resist material all in place, and the gloopy acid pasted on for the night. 










Managed to drag the lino dripping and slopping down to the carpark to hose it down. Took 3 hours to get all the acid and loose lino off.
















Cleaned and rerolled, ready to cart up to the studio for flattening, drying and inking.

Choosing my lawn roller from HSS Tool Hire - going for the cleanest one.



Monday, 7 April 2014

Selected for the Bainbridge Open 2014

I am really pleased to have one of my prints - "Flock" - selected for the Bainbridge Open 2014

The open submission show of contemporary printmaking runs from 7th May to 11th May 2014 at 
The Embassy Tea Gallery, 
195 - 205 Union Street,
London SE1 0LR

Wednesday, 6 November 2013

Shortlisted for New Graduate Award 2013 at the London Print Studio

I am really pleased to have been shortlisted for the New Graduate Award 2013 at the London Print Studio. London Print Studio They had over eighty applicants and I am one of eight shorlisted. The award gives studio membership for a year, 25 sessions at the studios using all the amazing facilities, a free workshop course, mentoring sessions and one to one training with technical specialists. Fingers crossed!

Tuesday, 5 November 2013

Off the Ground, Group Show inspired by Nature

Three of my prints have been hung in the upstairs gallery at Resource for London, 356 Holloway Road, N7 6PA. The exhibition is open until December 4th 2013 and is well worth seeing.
Here are some photos from the private view.
(photo of me taken by Sheryl Tait)





Sunday, 27 October 2013

Off The Ground

I am delighted that three of my prints have been accepted to this group show -  my image "Rivers of Bitumen" has been used in the promotional leaflet.






Sunday, 16 June 2013

Exhibition at Centre for Recent Drawing C4RD

I was invited to show a preparatory piece of work at this exhibition, and chose a print of "Flock" which was printed using the whole of the lino, without the side borders, printing edge to edge of the paper:

"Coinciding with the graduating exhibition, Centre for Recent Drawing presents as part of its Moot series the work of over fifty students currently studying BA Fine arts course at the Cass, London Metropolitan University, which has enhanced its drawing provision in the last few years in consultation with C4RD. This exhibition sits within the frame of the preparatory, or as studio work, consisting mainly of smaller sketches, maquettes and general ephemera that may precede a more final work or serve as an outcome extracted from other work."
Centre for Recent Drawing
2-4 Highbury Station Rd LONDON N1 1SB
+44 2032396936  Charity No.1123530  Thu- Sat 1-6pm

 Link to C4RD

Friday, 14 June 2013

Degree Show

The titles of the prints reflect the process and materials used as well as hinting at what they could represent.
A Jetty of Lino
Flock
Rivers of Bitumen
Sea of Acid
Linoleum Wilderness
Splintering Wood


Prints in situ:











Private view night
Sea of Acid



Monday, 3 June 2013

Preparing for the Degree Show

I have spent the last few weeks printing my linos, working out templates on the press so that all plates are positioned in exactly the same place on the paper, with the same borders from one image to the next. I have been making my own frames so that the prints hang surrounded by a stained black frame but are not under glass. I have designed a system so that the prints drape over a steel bar, which is held in place by extremely strong magnets at the back of the frame, rather like a Japanese scroll painting.

For the Degree Show (on June 13th 2013) my prints have been selected to hang in the main foyer, and I am exhibiting six prints, as three pairs:

Pairs of prints ready to hang. Marking up the press has enabled images and borders to be aligned.

In position


The Ground Floor Foyer

On route to the lifts and stairs

Making the frames: 
Gluing the backing board to the frame
Inked up plate ready to receive the paper. Masking tape used to position lino and paper. Edges taped up to get a white border.


I have titled the prints:
A Linoleum Wilderness
A Sea of Acid
Splintering Wood
A Jetty of Lino
Rivers of Bitumen
Flock
  

Saturday, 27 April 2013

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: