Forward Broadcast: Conversation with Sue Baker Kenton

Abstract

Rebecca Partridge: We are at Leicester Print Workshop in the run up to Forward Broadcast, an exhibition of prints which you have largely made here in the workshop. Could you describe the work and the installation?

Sue Baker Kenton: The installation comprises of two walls that face each other: on one side is an array of monochrome etchings of sitters under the age of 30. All the etchings are all mounted on boards with some of the portraits ‘leaving’ the wall onto free-standing panels. The wall opposite appears blank, but, as the light shifts, constellations of tiny portrait heads of an older generation are revealed, printed in transparent greys directly onto the wall. These sitters are gazing directly at us, unlike the subjects in the etchings who are gazing at their phones. None of the work is under glass, which emphasises the materiality of the surface. It’s really important to me with this exhibition that it’s a sensory, immersive experience and that the audience engages in a physical way. Integral to the installation is a sound piece which suggests auditory interference: sounds of everyday life and snippets of conversation which come and go, the content building then dropping out just as you begin to make sense of its patterns. On the large gallery window there are multiple drawings of heads which have been silkscreen printed onto the glass itself, and which cast shifting shadows across the space during the day.