Redefining Print Residency 2014 - 15

 

18 month residency programme developed by Double Elephant Print Workshop with artists Mark Leahy, Katy Connor, Claire Thornton and writer Carolyn Black.

 

The project aimed to create an opportunity for artists who do not normally work with print to experiment, exploring hybrid approaches and challenging traditional boundaries of printmaking. The residency includes an intensive 4-day print workshop, access to Double Elephant's facilities and technical support, the release of a print edition portfolio and a symposium and exhibition in November 2015.

 

During the residency, I experimented with very lo-fi and immediate forms of print making and exploring what the defines making a print - what is the essence of this process? Frottage seems to share a taxonomy with printmaking. The contact of surfaces, the translation of one layer to another. My limited experiences of printmaking allowed me to apply the conceptual thinking and research I am undertaking to a physical process - to use printmaking as tool to understand the connections between my frankly sprawling and web-like artistic research and the ways in which I can make this visible.

 

Both printmaking and frottage often have a moment of blindness when the image is created, described in the text I read. A moment when the surface to be translated is covered, cloaked, and the resulting reading, rubbing or print emerges. Sometimes existing as a reversal, a re-edit into a mirror image.