Sketchbooks

The challenge of other possibilities

The danger of being satisfied with working within the comforts of the familiar; therein lies mediocrity. 

Embarking on an MA in Fine Art at Anglia Ruskin University (’23 – ’25), the intention, or at least the hope, is to challenge my established practice and develop it materially, aesthetically, philosophically and technically.

I can’t control the response to my work.

On these pages will appear the experimentation, the progression of ideas and the development of practice. A digital sketchbook.

Does surface/material affect artistic intent and audience response?
Half-toned photographic image screen-printed on to bread.
Half-toned image printed on to acetate and exposed on a screen ready for inking.
Materiality is not just about selecting a medium; it is about understanding how the material itself can contribute to the artistic expression and audience response.
The intention was also to document the bread’s decay over time. However after 3 weeks no mould had appeared! This was cheap bread, however I’m not too happy about what must be put in it to prevent mould.
This work was shown to the local vicar, his response was:
‘Bread of Angels’ is mentioned in the book of Psalms….’Mortals ate of the bread of angels; he sent them food in abundance’ (Psalm 78:25)
Each image was first screen-printed on to Perspex. Whist wet and using crumpled paper, the image was rubbed. The paper moving the ink around the Perspex. The Perspex is then passed through a printing press and thereby transferred to paper.
Photographed in bright sunlight to cast strong shadows. Distance between poppies and wall sufficient to soften the edges of the shadows.
The dried poppy stems and heads were placed directly in contact with the photopolymer plate and exposed to produce the negative image of the shadow cast by the poppies.
Man Ray, experimented with early contact photographic techniques. These are a selection of his more well-known rayographs.
William Fox Talbot was another pioneer.
Cornelia parker is a contemporary artist who has also worked with contact photography in the form of photogravures.
Inking up the plate and passing through an etching press, the negative is printed as a positive. The image on the left is the first pass of the press. Without inking again it was passed through the press a second time to produce a lighter second image.
Alternative process analogue photography forces the artist to surrender control of the end product and submit to certain elements of chance. The hand of the artist is also very much visible in these processes.
1st print taken from the photopolymer plate.
An ongoing look at the use of non-conventional drawing tools. In this case mark making using the stem and head of a dried poppy. Once again this gives a degree of unpredictability about the results.
Poppy stem drawings using stem of dried poppy and Indian ink. The result has a fluidity about it due to the lack of tight control. Style is akin to calligraphy brush strokes.
The South African artist William Kentridge often draws directly on to walls. The choice of scale emphasising the hand of the artist in creating the works.
The use of the Letterpress has a rich history of use in political activism. It was therefore appropriate to try it out for this political work.
Wooden letters arranged back to front for printing.
1st, 2nd and 3rd pass of the press without re-inking to show the fading type. The Word ‘NOT’ was hand printed to provide individual lettering arrangements between prints.
The protest poster was celebrated in an exhibition at the London New North Press which featured the work of 100 letterpress artists from 17 countries.
With 350 Conservative MPs to choose from, the challenge was to select only a few. Here, 9 politicians responsible for so much misery in our country.
In order to screenprint, the images must be converted to ‘halftone’ i.e. made up of a series of small dots for the ink to pass through.
Initially printing onto toilet paper proved problematic. The porous nature of the paper meant it would stick to the screen mesh rather than the table. Two passes of the squeegee was therefore not possible as it resulted in a blurred image.
Darker ink and one pass of the squeegee followed by careful peeling off of the toilet paper from the mesh improved the final print.
The ink was absorbed and dried quickly allowing for a continuous printing of the toilet roll.
Absolutely NOT toilet humour – depressingly serious!
Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ 1917 introduced the concept of the readymade.
Piero Manzoni’s ‘Merde d’Artiste’ 1961 and Andy Warhol’s ‘Oxidation Painting’ 1978 both looked at the commodification of art. Raw material expelled as commodity.
Sarah Lucas’ ‘Is Suicide Genetic?’ 1996
The aim was to explore the feasibility of exposing plant matter directly onto a silkscreen and then to compare the results with those obtained using the photopolymer etching.
The random arrangement of the grasses produces quite a bold image on the screen. How will it interact with the more formal compositions of individual stems?
These are reminiscent of Man Ray’s photograms or Victorian botanical illustrations.
I was surprised by how much I liked this composition. The contrast between the loose grasses with the formal aesthetic of the flowers made for an interesting print with movement.
Barbara Walker uses embossed works to emphasise the erasure of the black experience as a result of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Vector file prepared in illustrator and imported to RDWorks. The black area will be burnt off to a depth of 50% of the thickness of the Perspex.
3mm Perspex sheet with dried poppy image engraved and left as a raised image.
Detail of engraving.
The image was not as interesting as I’d hoped. Barbara Walker’s embossed images worked more as they had the detailed graphite drawing to sit alongside it. The images had a purpose. This image has no purpose apart from aesthetic.
Poppy image engraved on to 3mm plywood.
Side view to see the raised profile of the poppies engraved in to the plywood.
The natural properties of the wood and burning result in some colour being transferred to the paper on pressing. The 1st and 2nd press show a fading in wood colour.
The resulting texture in this image, in my opinion makes for a more interesting result. The natural plant matter in conjunction with the wood of the plywood.
1st print taken from the photopolymer plate.
Where Capitalist, neo-liberal and Globalisation policies combine to destroy small communities.
A brief study of poverty and abandonment in the Norfolk town of Fakenham.
Medium format B&W photographs of abandoned/empty commercial spaces in Fakenham.
Killip’s aim was to document the effects of economic policy on those who do not shape it, but who experience its effects most keenly. As Killip himself stated it’s a story of those who have history ‘done to them’.
Doing an exposure test strip in the dark room to ascertain the correct exposure time.
The use of liquid photographic emulsion applied to MDF was a conscious choice to allude to the whitewash paint and boards common on disused/abandoned buildings.
The circularity of embossing images of disused buildings onto plywood holds some scope for potential development.
Although aesthetically pleasing these un-inked pressings have limited potential for development.
This image, with the inclusion of the person, has the most potential.
Mono-print experimentation with different ink combinations.
Use of Indian inks to paint into the spaces. These are picked up with the press.
This one works best. The green on grey suggesting a creeping mould. However it still doesn’t suggest a loss of community identity.
This seminal conceptual work by Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin. Embedded with the British army in Afghanistan, during the deadliest month for soldiers in Helmand province. On the fifth day nobody died. To mark this, 6m of photographic paper was exposed to the sun for 20 seconds.
High resolution scans of small sections of the larger image reveals an image both abstract yet also representative of the fading cohesion of the community.
The digital image may be better represented as a 4 layer CMYK screenprint.
The image represented as a 4 layer CMYK screenprint. As a poster this could be site specific and pasted back up in the town centre.
There is always a cruel edge to advertising in poor areas. It’s as if advertisers are saying “we know you can’t really afford this, but go further into the red anyway”. As a lightbox in an advertising billboard the image could be a counter to this. A possible unambiguously direct title to this work is: ‘Forty years of Thatcherism has brought us to this’