IMPACT Printmaking Journal

Printmaking Communities at the Edge of Chaos

Laura Onions — 2024-01-03

The theme for the conference, ‘The Printmakers Voice’, and the notion of a ‘Post-pandemic Voice’, has prompted reflection upon the previously taken-for-granted social and material aspects of printmaking now brought into sharp focus. Utilising ideas from complexity theory and alternative geographies within this paper we consider how the printmaking community we are part of has evolved and how the printmaker's voice and the post-pandemic voice meet.

Printmaking is an integral part of the BA (Hons) Fine Art course at the Wolverhampton School of Art. With introductory workshops in the first year, developing into an advanced ‘experimental printmaking and photography’ workshop in the second year. In 2016-17 a ‘Print Club’ developed out of this formal teaching and learning space into weekly sessions on Wednesday evenings. The Club brings together students and staff across a range of courses (not solely fine art) who have a specific interest in pursuing printmaking. There are no set agendas, and print club members work alongside each other on their projects in a supportive environment. Some regulars come each week and those who drop in. Some are trying to realise a project and those who want to sit and chat. Recognising the impacts of space and place on social cohesion and voice, we borrow from feminist geographer Doreen Massey, who stated that ‘space is a product of inter-relations between people and place’[i], in which different trajectories co-exist and are always under construction. Collective moments of social interaction orbit around printing presses, spaces of multiplicity embedded within material practices. [i] Massey, D. (2005) For Space. (London: Sage Publishing).

The Synthetic Landscape

Ian Chamberlain — 2024-01-03

In this article, I will highlight and examine some of the core values at the heart of my practice. These will include my approaches to making, the themes and concepts I explore, and most importantly how I see these connections. I will overview some of my past works and focus on three bodies of work that I see as pivotal in the development of my practice, bringing together process and core conceptual concerns.

The Middle Kingdom

Killian Dunne — 2024-01-03

In 2018, I entered the final year of my Master of Fine Arts in Visual Communications at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). During this period, I was still trying to define what a self-directed design practice could be. I come from a fine print etching background and any design work I have done in my life has been design solutions for clients. Self-directed design seemed to be a practice that resided somewhere between these two spaces.

Exactly 20 years previously, I had completed my end-of-school examinations in Ireland. I received my six exam results on a small piece of printed paper. Despite the huge amount of pressure put on students regarding these exams, this small piece of paper never did me any good; over the past 20 years, it has only brought negativity. I felt I had left school knowing more about football (the local obsession) than the six subjects I had studied (English, Irish, art, history, maths, and music). For my SAIC Graduate Show project, I decided to redesign my small exam results page, transforming it from something with negative associations into a series of artists’ books that would have a positive function in my life. Each book would explore one of the six subjects and be based on a real game of football from history. Each book would examine the original school subject through the lens of the real game from history, but in a manner that would be beneficial to my creative practice. They would have the dimensions of the football match day programmes I had grown up reading. They would use the same page grid system, the same exam-like paper stock, the same book cover styling, and the same type of faces but would be completely different books in their visual languages.

#PandemicFridge

Raluca Iancu — 2024-01-03

The Covid-19 pandemic affected all aspects of contemporary life, from how we work to how we shop, travel, and eat. Previously banal activities such as going to the grocery store became challenging and anxiety-inducing, with a new level of danger associated with leaving one’s home. To document and respond to this global experience, Jennifer Scheuer, assistant professor in printmaking at Purdue University, and I began collaborating on a series of collages titled #PandemicFridge. The project investigates the idea of care, nourishment and sustainability through the motif of the fridge, both literal and metaphorical. Our practice emerged from the pandemic and is indelibly marked by it: the new ways of working we have developed are informed by this experience as we were forced to find workarounds and new avenues to pursue our work.

The Museum of Unrest

John Phillips — 2024-01-03

In 1975, Pippa Smith and I set up Paddington Printshop, a community graphics centre in west London with the unattractive invitation “Come to our unheated semi-derelict factory and homemade press to promote your cause on the following condition: nothing sexist, racist, or commercial”. It worked: within days the place was full, and soon numerous printshops, based on our DIY model, sprang up around the country. The Printshop was an educational resource. The first thing I learned was to listen – a skill notably absent from my fine-art training. The second realisation was that our role might extend beyond designing posters.

The Printshop became an incubator for new organisations and resources locally, nationally, and internationally. Things didn’t change overnight, but during the 80s demand for posters waned. Rebranded as London Print Workshop, we turned to providing resources for artists, alongside the continuation of our community activist role.

Claude Chamber

Salla Myllylä — 2024-01-03

Proto-photographic and proto-cinematic technologies are an unending source of inspiration for a visual artist. We want to consider the case of an eighteenth-century optical device, the Claude mirror, as a starting point for an artistic collaboration.

The Claude mirror is a small black convex mirror named after the painter Claude Lorrain and used by late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century painters and travellers for viewing landscapes. The dark mirror surface produces an image with a limited tonal range, allowing the viewer to look at the environment as if it were a painting. A famous Thomas Gainsborough drawing shows a man seated on a bank with a sketchbook on his lap and holding an oval mirror propped against a tree branch (Gainsborough, 1750-55).

In spring 2019, in a flash of joint inspiration, we conceived a method of combining aspects of our artistic processes: Salla’s moving image and Laura’s printmaking practice. For 18 months, we captured photographic time-lapse sequences of everyday views from the backyards of our studios, residencies, and homes as reflections on the surface of copper plates installed in the environment (Myllylä and Vainikka, 2021). In the resulting installation, titled Claude Chamber, we projected the video sequences on the gallery space, reflected via the same mirror surfaces, and the projected images became distorted and spatial.

We were intrigued by this optical device, in which characteristics of photography and printmaking meet. One can think of a Claude glass as a predecessor of the camera viewfinder, an early photographic gesture. It can also be viewed as a printing plate, a matrix reflecting a view. In a traditional printing plate, the image is attached or fastens itself onto the surface of the plate; in our installation, the image is transient and moving.

Prints in Rhythm

Giulia Leonelli — 2024-01-03

This paper will introduce my research in the field of printmaking by observing my body of work realised over recent years. Utilising the theoretical approach developed in my doctoral thesis Entendre le pictural (published in 2017). I will defend the rhythmic qualities of printmaking, focusing on the creative process, as well as considering the hanging and installation of a series of prints.

First, let’s consider the meaning of this title Entendre le pictorial. The title sheds light on both my reflection on art and my printmaking practice. Entendre in French carries a double meaning: it is the verb form of the word that means to hear and listen; at the same time, it means to understand and consider. This double entendre, when applied to visual arts, suggests a kind of experience that unfolds in space and time, a physical dimension where art is heard and considered, then understood and felt in its scale.

The word Pictural in the title refers to the painterly qualities pursued in my work, having been first trained as a painter. Approaching printmaking, this pictorial quest certainly echoes the use of colour and chromatic research as a fundamental part of the creative work. But the main reason I define my printmaking practice as pictorial lies with the abstract patterns and shapes that spring into being as rhythm rather than structure, always seeking to suggest movement and inconsistency. In this sense, the pictorial echoes the painterliness concept defended by art historian Heinrich Wölfflin as a peculiar characteristic of Baroque art in its quest for open and irregular shapes.

Displacement

Marta Bełkot — 2024-01-03

The concept of displacement and its consequences are permanently present in my practice, either in the narratives explored in light of the personal stories that have a wider psychological impact, or in the archaeological approach to tame raw, organic materials through the reconstitution of technological, 19th-century procedures considered obsolete and commercial. The approach to paper based on multiple experiments led to reconstructing feasible alternatives to the traditional techniques of obtaining images, including photographic and non-photographic processes. Revision of gillotage, reconstruction of lithographic drawing, painting and printing tools and working in situ directed the research into more immediate work with raw materials like resins, plasters, organic glues, and pigments. Preliminary tests of image development with dichromate dusting methods established satisfactory surfaces for traditional photo-enamel. In my PhD proposal, displacement meets with the obsolete techniques and the fusion of printmaking, photography, and glass as a haptic medium that corresponds to my heuristic approach.

Why Print Was an Excellent Conceptual Vehicle for my Project ‘Speak Up’

Katy Drake — 2024-01-03

“I give away my power. In side-stepping, in not calling out the sexist remarks, I act as if they are in the right, I act as if women should not have voices, and I act as if I am not a feminist.” (Pine, 2019. p.188)

Influenced by the continual sharing amongst my friends and colleagues of experiences of sexism, sexual harassment and assault happening to us in public where no one spoke up at the time, my MA major project, ‘Speak Up’, used a feminist methodology to research the reasons why we don’t speak up when these incidents occur. It concluded by both representing these incidents and why they weren’t called out in print-based artworks, with the intention of prompting dialogue.

This paper will explore the hypothesis that print was an excellent ‘conceptual vehicle’ (Harding, 2013. p.107) for this project.

The B.I.G. Journey

Andrew Baldwin — 2024-01-03

This article focuses on the development of a unique safer etching process. It begins with the realisation that the traditional process of etching in fine art was impacting the health of many printmakers, including my own. In the early 2000s, a non-toxic approach to printmaking was regarded by most artists as a marginal endeavour used by those who were willing to sacrifice quality for safety. The majority of printmakers were not willing to embrace the new safer processes on the assumption that the materials and processes were inferior, and perhaps more specifically, because they were not prepared to forfeit the years of experience and the expertise amassed using a traditional technique. Etching was hard enough to control for even the expert printmaker. The foundation of this safer method is based around ‘BIG’; an etching ground which does not contain the toxic elements of a traditional ground.

United in Isolation

Carl Middleton — 2024-01-03

Since the beginning of the millennium, (online community-orientated) social media and platforms have been steadily evolving. The establishment of Facebook in 2004 followed by Instagram in 2010 has provided two of the most valuable conduits for digital communities to date. As consumer popularity changed, memberships migrated from one platform to the next – Flickr to Twitter, Twitter to Facebook and so on. Today, audiences are presented with a broad portfolio of online networking resources. Self-broadcasting, sharing of information, and commentary and communication are commonplace. All are free at the point of use, as long as users are comfortable with the concept of digital ‘sharing’. A generation of millennials embraces open source and share-ware, financing contemporary initiatives through crowdfunding – together wherever, whatever.

Practice Beyond Boundaries

Clare Humphries — 2024-01-03

The Impact 12 Conference asked us to consider how print practitioners have been breaking boundaries through technological innovation and cross-disciplinary practice. What new territories have been unearthed through contesting the field and its proximal position to others? In our earliest conversations about these questions, we realised they were predicated on the assumption that breaking boundaries is good because it allows artists to pursue the new or unconventional. It also supposes that disciplinary progress will require an act of breaking, perhaps a rupture, transgression, or breaching. The notion of breaking boundaries also implies that we exist in a state of disciplinary limitations. Why is it that artists (including us at times) feel compelled to transgress boundaries and reshape the field? Finally, where do we locate the value of practice: Is it as they say ‘on the cutting edge’, or can value be oriented another way?

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have become preoccupied with the production and fortification of boundaries on a personal, community, and global scale. This paper was born from our realisation that the pandemic has amplified, redrafted, and problematised notions of the boundary in the collective imagination. This moment called us—two artists reaching across a disciplinary divide—to question the nature of boundaries and their implications. Our desire to critically assess the value of boundary-making and breaking led us to our thesis: Is there another way to approach disciplinarity without theorising boundaries, territories, and their rupture?

TRANSMEDIAL

Sarah Robinson — 2024-01-03

To enhance future technology-integrated approaches with handmade print, this paper aims to trigger conversations on how printmaking might change in an ambitious digital world, albeit in a new form. TRANSMEDIAL is a research project accompanying an international printmaking exhibition that examines diverse intersections between art, technology and science. Curated by artists and researchers Monika Lukowska and Sarah Robinson, TRANSMEDIAL asks in what way technology has embedded itself within the printmaking medium, not only technically but also conceptually, and what the implications are for audiences, artists and the field.

Towards an Experimental Creation of the Printed Image for an Active Reception

Raquel Serrano Tafalla — 2024-01-03

This article proposes a reflection on how contemporary experimental practices in the printed image can encourage the viewer towards active reception. My practice-based research project has been instigated by questions raised through my fine art practice, concerning how reality is perceived within a photographic printed image and how chance in creation helps the possible development of the photographic reference.

The discovery of photography in 1839 triggered a mode of reproducing images that challenged traditional forms of visual representation. Its characteristic of mimesis of reality, unlike painting, drawing or engraving, forced artists to change their patterns of behaviour. With the arrival of Impressionism, artists recognised the influence of photography on their work, and the “photographic gaze” emerged, which provided a new way of contemplating and representing. As Coronado writes in his text on photography and Impressionism, “The photographic gaze extends beyond and beyond the limits of vision allowed to the painter’s eye” (Coronado, 1998, p. 310).

During the first half of the twentieth century, in the context of the avant-garde, the connection between photography and the plastic arts arose, leading to the conception of new photography in which the symbiosis of the verbal and the visual became evident. The period was marked by a type of innovation that produced a change in expressive resources by breaking with the mimetic condition, ceasing to be the mirror of the world to create another independent narrative, becoming the new reality.

REDDER.COM

Elizabeth Lloyd — 2024-01-03

I want to take you on a Space Odyssey-Oddity to the fourth rock from the sun—to planet Mars.

The ‘voice echo’ reflecting upon practice and pandemic will be relayed to you as a countdown sequence from lift-off to landing on the red planet, courtesy of REDDER.COM duty-free shopping on Mars.

REDDER.COM brings you this experience through a subjective exploration of how space is perceived metaphorically, spiritually, and physically.

Projects for current PhD research, ‘Articulating Space’, explore the parallels between real and imagined space.

Printmaking, both analogue and digital, evokes knowledge and human history. The act of printmaking reveals not only the image, but also the embedded techniques, revealing analogies to science, language, and the machine.

To travel into outer space, within the context of our human existence, “I am setting up shop” and building an installation to house various departments within it.

I will be travelling back to the future, setting out my stall, describing processes and practices, revealing my methodology.

‘We’re leavin’ together, But still it’s farewell, And maybe we’ll come back, To Earth, who can tell?’