News
: GLOBAL STUDIO
The
Bluecoat - Global Studio Exhibition
9th April – 20 June 2010
Aspects of contemporary printmaking, graphic processes
of communication
Global as a concept is not necessarily about nationality, geography
or place but more a question of attitude, a political commitment,
a strategy and ambition to explore significant social and cultural
questions through creative practice, dialogue and forms of communication.
Over the last ten years the landscape for the creative practice
of Printmaking has changed, the advent of global communication has
enabled much greater international collaboration and for a wider
community of Printmakers across the world to be connected. Printmaking,
both in its message and its production, has always been primarily
a democratic and collaborative process. These factors have allowed
printmaking to quietly gain a more pivotal role in mainstream contemporary
art practice.
Pete Clarke has selected artists from various international
networks, for this Printmaking Project as part of ‘Global
Studio’ - IMPACT 6 Print Conference and exhibition, Bristol,
UK 2009, Coast- the Liverpool International Artists Workshop 2007
and the on-going ‘Eight Days A Week’ artists from Liverpool
and Cologne taking part in unique cultural exchanges.
PETE
CLARKE Mount Vernon
A series of Etching and Photo-Polymer Prints
A mixed metaphor initially based on an annotated found copy of T.S.
Eliot Poems for the text combined with images from the demolition
of the Piranesi-like nurses’ home on Mount Vernon, the hill
rise behind the Royal Liverpool Hospital. Mount Vernon was the plantation
home of George Washington, the first President of the USA.
‘There has always been an important influence from literature
and on literary narrative as a stimulus for problems of communication.
I collect old type and often use fragmented language in work, for
example recent prints and drawings are influenced by finding a rather
broken and torn copy of ‘The Waste Land and Other Poems’
by T.S. Eliot, an old Faber Paperback that has been annotated in
beautiful pencil handwriting across the text by an anonymous author,
in a valiant attempt to understand the meaning of the poems. It
becomes visually and textually a fascinating conceptual document,
not surprisingly then it has stimulated recent work’.
WUON-GEAN
HO Masks Unmasked
Colour trial proofs for works in the Mask Series
In the silkscreen prints that make up the Mask Series, I explored
the notion that we have much more history, emotions and attitudes
in the make up of our true personality than can be conveyed by viewing
the surface and texture of the face alone. I combined imagery from
myth; concrete interactions; savage emotions and strong aspirations,
in a blurring of traditional portraiture to a more symbolic one.
Some of the small histories are described on the surface of the
face, and others are hidden in shadows or ambiguous tattoo-like
lines.
The wall of prints that compose Masks Unmasked is about the numerous
colour trial proofs that I made as I explored the themes and tried
to isolate an image that was most intense and resonated with my
personal aesthetic. The wall is an interesting insight into my thought
process, from colour swatches and scribbled notes alongside the
images to my handling and layering of colour. Much like a diary,
it charts the choices and substance in the making of my work.
CARL
ROWE Drool
Screen-print, ink containing 20 herbs and spices, tin cans
Ivan Pavlov is remembered for his work with dogs, which led to the
formulation of his theory on respondent conditioning. When a dog
is habitually fed shortly after ringing a bell, it will salivate
in response to the bell regardless of whether there is food or not.
For Drool, a poster image of Ivan Pavlov has been screen-printed
in a special ink comprising twenty herbs and spices derived from
the G20 countries. Twenty posters are pasted on the gallery wall
each representing one of the standard currencies of the G20. Below
a triangular stack of tin cans is suggestive of capitalistic commerce
and hints at Abram Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
The work should impart a feint sweet smell of spice.
ROOHI AHMED Typhoon
Etching, hard ground and aquatint
Typhoon is about language and the subtleties of communication and
understanding. The resulting dialogue is explored through a variety
of media, research methods and the complexities of collaboration.
The body of work encompasses images as metaphors, symbols or merely
‘figures of speech’ evolved from conversations that
are either fluid or fragmented. The resulting works come together
and yet remain distinct allowing for a holistic experience of expression.
The understanding and inference of these works rests upon their
constituent objects and words, however, the resulting ambiguities
require the creative imagination of the reader to synthesise and
complete the narrative.
GEORG
GARTZ Lost and Found
An installation of silkscreen prints combined with a reconstructed
family cupboard remembering childhood experiences
‘His cultural outlook and means of production are based on
the philosophical relationships between the act of making and creative
addition with processes of negation and revision, that destruction
can be a creative act. His working methods seek to establish the
critical tension between rationality and the exploitation of accident
by balancing systematic organisation with the orchestration of formal
difference, in a sense he infects clear clean colourful surfaces
and structures with viral mark making. This use of different paint
qualities and textures with stencils and mono printing from found
industrial surfaces and wallpapers generate new forms of hybridity
in contemporary painting’.
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