Ekphrasis: inscriptions on wood and stone

Abstract

Ekphrasis is a series of nine hand finished stone lithographs. Drawn on stone using a combination of autographic marks and transferred photographic imagery, the lithographs were printed by the artist using a direct press onto Simili Japon paper (sheet size 96 x 64 cms.). The seven copies of each image are individually hand coloured.

Through the narrative threads of language, Ekphrasis considers an intimate relationship between site and practice. Navigating both the tracks and pathways of local parkland, and the contours of lines drawn on stone, the text dwells on the analogous acts of inscription in which these worlds converge. Moving between the woodland environment and the lithography studio these territories offer sites of speculation in which the transcriptions of language are born. Glimpsed in this process is an interplay between systems and substrates that simultaneously progress these unfolding lines, whilst resisting and constraining the routes they take. Spilling out from the overflow of these events is the excess of ornament.