Remembering

Listening to Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu in my new studio space, while the summer rain drizzles outside my window, and remembering travelling through Central Australia hearing this extraordinary voice - beautiful voice and beautiful memories!

No excuse for some work now!!

Collagraphs from slide transparency

One of the aspects of my practice over the last few months has been printmaking experimenting with etching and aquatint which has been challenging. I haven't felt at ease with the process. Now I have discovered collagraphs and I love the process!

I am using one of my family slide transparencies as a starting point. 

I created a collagraph plate using mounting card as the base to create the image. I printed first in relief and then intaglio on somerset paper (below)

onto acid free tissue

then tracing paper

and finally onion skin paper - I really loved the onion skin as it has a slight sheen and is semi transparent giving it an aged look - but impossible to photograph or scan! The prints on somerset paper will be framed and entered for an exhibition at the Limekiln Gallery in Calstock next February.

My practice is concerned with the fragility of memory and the passing of time so my images are sometimes blurred, sometimes out of focus, sometimes with an unreal clarity - they are memories that have a uncertain relationship with reality. The materials I use are also fragile or translucent - decay, disintegration and discoloration also play an important part as does failure!

Last week we had a group crit - I took 20 slide transparencies and showed them on an old slide projector along with the collagraphs - the feedback was positive - particularly the clicking of the projector which evokes certain memories depending on your age of course! Those endless hours of watching friend and family holiday slides!

one more week to go

Only one week to go and my final 4th year project will be installed for assessment - I will then (if I pass) have a diploma in fine art with 2 more years (part time) to get my BA (hons) - 6 years is a long time I think you will agree but I just go from year to year and it is amazing how quickly they fly by. So 6 days to complete my project and so much to do - I find that sometimes the hardest thing to know is when the work is finished - STOP - when? Then I have a 500 word rational to write and my sketch book and research to bring up to day as I have all sorts of loose paper scattered about the studio in piles which my tutor assessors would make no sense of at all - so it needs to be organised and made sense of by me first!

And the project itself well let me try and explain. I have been working with a family archive of about 200 slide transparences (remember them?) passed on to me when my father died a few years ago - many are damaged and would suit Seth's disintegration project really well!! You can see what I mean in this slide below

At this point I must mention what a terrible photographer my father was, figures so far in the distance they are hard to make out or so close up only part of the person is in the picture, mostly out of focus too! They really are so bad they are quite wonderful!

Added to this is mold, fungal disintegration and bleeding of colours.

So I have taken this a step further playing with these elements. The originals have been digitalised and reprinted on acetate and made into slide transparences again - these are going to be projected in pairs! I hope it works - here is one of the original slides that I have been playing with

that has now become 2 slides which will be projected side by side on an automatic slide projector. Why my mother is sitting, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, in a suit staring out to sea i have no idea - it was taken about 35 years ago, I would love to ask her but she has been dead for many years now. So my project is about memories and how even when we are not part of the event in a photograph it sparks our own memories, maybe of the place or the people, we might remember just a fragment of something that is contained in that photograph! I would love to know your thoughts about this!

I hope to have around 15 pairs of images and when they are finished I will post some of them on the blog - meantime wish me luck!