Mirrored trees

I came to the realisation that the unending forest would be ever spookier if the trees mirrored each other. One minute you would think you’d know where you were going, the next you’d be passing by a world which you’d seen before, but in reverse…

Here are some shots of the printing process of these big prints. Because of the scale, I had to divide the image in four and screenprint them one  quarter at a time on the fabric bed, as the largest screen bed wasn’t large enough…

 

 

 

 

I’ve been printing these in East London Printmakers for my show in Wales that opens in 3 days time!!!

 

Went for a well deserved swim after all that work. I think I’m building up my shoulder muscles!

 

Fantastic New Orleans

The SGCI conference in New Orleans was a right bonanza.

Imagine over 1500 printmakers all partying in a town famous for its hedonism, fried food and jazz. Seriously, there are naked lap-dancers in the bars in the middle of the day!

It was amazing. The town is set on the banks of the Mississippi, a steamy grey thing.

Buildings are graceful and crumbling, and palm trees and huge spreading live oaks line the avenues, which still retain their French names.

Highlights for me were numerous. Willie Cole opened the conference with a keynote speech about his artistic practice which involves a method of mark making with a hot iron which he calls scorching, which in effect is a type of printed mark. His work was beautiful and playful, taking photographs of irons and making them into mask like faces, or using the ironed marks to make huge figure composites.

There was a great exhibition of prints by David Dreisbach, who was awarded the printmaker emeritus prize by the Southern Graphics council this year, in the Contemporary Arts Center.

I marveled at his narrative and compositional strength, all while tucking into perhaps the most delicious spread of food ever seen at a private view before. Appreciating art must be hungry work, seeing how much they’d laid out.

There were inspiring, ambitious and fantastic demonstrations especially the rubber stamp one by Sukha Worob who showed us how he cuts into foam board with a router set to 1/4″ depth and then fills the mould with a solution of silicone rubber composite called “Mold Max”

and some great silkscreen prints printed by Ernest Milsted with wallpaper paste and water soluble dyes in place of the traditional acrylics and medium, producing lovely prints all at a fraction of the cost.

There were some very impressive satellite events. I particularly liked Dirk Hagen’s broadside text speak haikus which he’d printed on letterpress and cardboard.

A lovely show of prints about New Orleans and the floods in the hippily named Healing Centre.

A nice set of prints in various portfolios were displayed in the hotel conference venue on grey pinboards and rotated daily; some of these were delicate and beautiful.

Also Midwest Pressed had a great show of silkscreen monoprints which were installed as a huge panel of floating heads of famous figures, skulls or Chewbacca.

This is my friend Brian Lane, from Seattle, who looks  a bit like Chewie.

Most notable for me was the Carnival of Ink set in an old ironworks factory to the east of the main town. This was a riot of printmaking activity.

Drive-by-press  printed T-shirts with skateboards (just inked up and jammed through the press with a foam blanket).

The main event was run by Wolfbat Press, and involved hundreds of artists who spent the week of the conference decorating box cars with collaged prints which were paraded them through the town on St Patrick’s day before setting them on fire.

Several studios ran various fun fair style games such as “Wrassle a printmaker and win a print for a dollar” which had me in fits of laughter.

I presented a paper on movement in print in the International panel which got some good feedback, if you would like to read the article then please go this page here,

then showed the animations Shift and Lucid Mask, along with a selection of prints at the open portfolio session,

which was a great time to meet other printmakers whose work I admire

Like Ben Moreau’s gorgeous etchings

Some print genius Marcus Benavides

Michael Barnes

Mark Bovey

And oh so many more…!

 

Trip up north

I promised myself I would never again venture up north in February, but found myself in Liverpool, Preston and Manchester this week, and loved it!

First stop was Liverpool, with its shabby buildings conveying a sense of elegant (or otherwise) decay.

I stopped off at the wonderful Bluecoat where there was a very arresting show by Gina Czarnecki. Her work is about the human body moving in space, and I found her video work very inspiring. The portrayal of frenzied and slow motion arabesquing movement is really beautiful.  I also loved the castle made of clear resin, much like spun glass, which is due to be encrusted with thousands of donated milk teeth in the four years to come. I wish I had retained my extracted wisdom tooth from a couple of weeks ago to add to the project!

There was another whimsical show called Republic of the Moon in FACT which was a great combination of sound, smell, installation and imagery. I particularly liked the “Moon Goose Analogue” by Agnes Meyer-Brandis, who has taken geese hatched and raised as if future super star astronauts. These cute fluffy things have been named patriotic space age names such as Boris and Svetlana, and spend their days wandering around happily in a lunar landscape space station in Italy, with a live feed to Liverpool.

Next stop was the University of Lancashire in Preston. It was surprisingly mild. I checked out the largest brutalist bus station in Europe and then the Harris museum.

There was  nice print show about walking the land, with multilayered boggy coloured meshes of paper installed in a quivering column above the central stairwell, by Tracy Hill, my host.

I toured the print department and had instant print studio envy when looking at their beautiful Columbian press. They have a very spacious department run by Pete Clarke and Tracy Hill pictured here.

I gave a talk on my work to local artists and students as part of their Art Lab talking Prints series, and showed them some of the latest video work.

For a nice review of what I talked about, please see the link here 
http://artlabcontemporaryprint.co.uk/?p=642

Afterwards I laid out a selection of prints from the past 12 years for them to view.

On my return trip I went via Manchester. It was rain rain rain, so a good opportunity to lurk around inside some great galleries, like the Portico Library where i saw a show on Victoriana, taxidermy and penny dreadfuls, and the Manchester Museum of Art. Ken Currie’s huge dystopian cityscape and Antony Gormley’s flying man were my favourite pieces in the Museum, alongside Grayson Perry’s ironic map of society (and technically brilliant etching) “Print for a Politician”.

Finally, I attended a private view in the Chinese Art Centre: Chen Man, a young photographer from China. Strangely enough, no-one mentions that she is also very proficient in Photoshop. Her images of women are stylized, glamorous, objectifying and sexual. The show is lavish! Fantasy female faces with luscious lips are printed larger than a metre high, and the imagery is appealing, commercial and desirable. (Shu Uemura sponsored the opening event with make up remover)… I liked seeing a successful female artist in such a solo show, but couldn’t decide if the vision presented was empowering or degrading to women.

 

Costanza video now has music

 

Click on the picture above to go to youtube video of Costanza with music by Mordant Music… Costanza’s feet resemble fluttering moths batting against a pane of light.

 

Recent shows

The beginning of January was the last chance to see the Big Ass Linocut show in London: where megalomaniac linocut makers gathered at the High Roller Society to show off their huge linocut skills. My prints Shadow Dance Together and Shadow Dance Apart were shown there, along with the animation Lucid Mask.

The show is going to evolve and expand when it moves to its next location, Hemingway Art in Oxfordshire in April this year.

Next up, I’m excited to be involved in the 6th International Artist Book Triennial which opens in Venice on the 3rd February. The theme this year is Love, and three of my books have been selected: Devour (the girl who loves and devours a beast); Embrace (the book where the man and the woman are divided by the folds of the book so that they may not be viewed at the same time together); and Bamboo Dream (where a couple are dreaming of each other on accordion folded sheets that interleave as the book folds together).

For more information please see their website here

Finally, it is full speed ahead for making the final frames for the animation. Actually I started animating the dress, then realised I needed more in between frames, so here I am back in the studio printing away still.

I’m venturing back up north again on the 8th February as a guest of the University of Lancashire Talking Prints program. I’ll be talking about this latest work … Should be interesting, though I’ve not booked to stay long as I had such a cold time in Yorkshire last year…

 

IMPACT in Melbourne

I made my first trip to Australia last month to attend the IMPACT printmaking conference in Melbourne. It was a four day bonanza of print related fun, and there were lots of inspiring people, places, exhibitions and lectures.

It was well attended event with many people from all over the world as well as within Australia itself. There were at least 25 students from Adelaide,  printmakers from the Torres Strait islands, Indonesia, Brazil, Iran, the US, amongst others, and a good handful of UK representatives including Sarah Bodman and John Purcell!

I enjoyed seeing various print studios in Australia, especially the fantastic facilities in VCA (Victoria College of the Arts), whose facilities include an electric albion press that looks like a one armed bandit crossed with a flower press

APW (Australian Print workshop), who have a suspiciously clean workshop, does anyone actually ever spread ink around in there?

Megalo print studio in Canberra where I taught a workshop (felt like home from home, with a friendly vibe and the biggest fabric bed in Eastern Australia)but at the same time the most cute handmade vacuum table I have ever seen too…

The big print study room at the National Gallery Canberra where we spent a happy few hours looking at Rauchenbergs and Stellas up close, courtesy of the Ken Tyler bequest

ANU (Australian National University), with a vast printmaking unit that would fit in the whole of East London Printmakers in one corner of their etching roomwith some terrifying signs on the walls

and some funny signs up on the walls

and a small printmaking studio in Araluen cultural institute in the desert, that even had a steamer and facilities for discharge printing, though everything seemed very unused.

The lectures at IMPACT were a bit patchy to be honest. I was shocked at the poor quality of the skype presentations and the pHD students who mumbled their thesises to themselves with lack of conviction. There were also many talks that really didn’t have much practical content, which was surprising considering the practical nature of the subject, or talks which spent a very long time saying very little (or am I just an untrained sceptic? Too many of the keywords “materiality” or “Derrida” were used for my liking!)

However, I really enjoyed the talk on Mike Parr by John Loane, a long term collaborative printmaker, who was very eloquent on his creative process. Other highlights were lectures on book arts, especially one on how dance may be incorporated into books by Jude Walton (“The proprioception of a book”) and one on book alterations by Inge Hanover (a lady who searches secondhand book stores for books which have been dedicated to others, or marked with tears, coffee and doodles).

There was the usual raft of talks on digital technology (“printmakers are scavengers of technology originally developed for other purposes”) and on Thai and Indonesian printmakers Prawat and Heri Dono.

The exhibitions were also varied. Some names just came up again and again, both in the university shows and in the city wide satellite shows, and I wanted to see more variety. For example, Angela Cavalieri makes large linocuts of text in Italian, carved in a chunky repetitive fashion. They are distinctive prints, but very illustrative. It was impressive that her work was present in 7 different venues but gave me the impression there was a lack of diversity in the choice of artwork.

I enjoyed seeing some of the Australian and Aboriginal artworks, and would have loved to see more local work from the Pacific region as well as south east Asia.

There was a fantastic demonstration of paste printing by Chika Ito who showed how she makes ink with boiled up rice flour and various organic natural dyes including strong tea! With these pastes she makes beautiful translucent silkscreen prints which are colour fast and very natural and non toxic.

In Melbourne itself, Robert Heather showed me around the National Library of Victoria which had a book art show on the first floor, as well as a stunning collection of printed maps and books from their archives, particularly of the natural flora and fauna drawn by European artists when they first colonised the country. We also visited the RMIT satellite shows including a box set exhibition exchange organised by Melanie Yazzie, called Fold, which was fantastic, and a lovely show of prints by Tate Adams, the artist who established the print programme in RMIT in the 60s (?), whose bold black and white prints are dynamic and graphic.

It was nice to meet lots of friendly printmakers from the UK as well as NZ, Canada and the States as well as the local crowd (especially the huge numbers from Adelaide) at the conference. Below from left to right are Glynnis and Jacqueline from Darwin Northern Editions (collaborative printmakers both) and Ann Cunningham from Melbourne who kindly had me stay at her house during the conference

Finally, one of my highlights was the chance to show my latest series of dancing dress prints that are going to make up an animation, and display my artist’s books to the conference attendees. I got a lot of positive feedback and interest, and it made my month!

 

Test animation for Costanza

I have developed an unhealthy obsession with Costanza, the heroine of Malatestan medieval history, who was murdered after having a string of lovers in the 15C, and been trying to create a sequence of images of her ghost in the room where she lived in the castle of Montefiore Conca. Well, it isn’t her ghost, it is me jumping around like a cricket pretending to be a ghost, but at least it’s a start! I think I’ll be working on some better files, and making it smoother in the next few weeks. In the meantime, have a look!

The amazing Baron Mordant has made sound for the piece, (MMoth) which really fits in with the crashing fluttering moth-like feel to the jumps. I love it! Have a look at the latest version here: 

 

Moth to a flame

The ancient fortress of the Malatesta family in Montefiore in Italy is more than 600 years old and full of tales of mystery, madness and revenge. Wandering around the old rooms with whitewashed walls and imposing panoramic views it is difficult to imagine a series of love affairs and arguments taking place in the same bit of space that we now occupy. However, when I got to a room near the top of the castle, with a high arched ceiling and spot of sunlight tracking across the bare floor, I felt a strong feminine presence, and was intrigued to hear that it used to be the room in which Costanza used to live. From what I can gather, she was extremely wealthy and had had a string of lovers after her husband was killed in battle, only to be murdered herself by her very own uncle who had objected to her German boyfriend. Her ghost is supposed to be there, and I managed to terrify myself a lot by taking pictures with a flash and staring appalled at a series of photos with floating white circles in them… real evidence of ghosts or was it the lens?

When I finally got over my fear of Costanza, I made a series of photos of my feet leaping and dancing in the space. If you view them sequentially and rapidly, the feet look like they are flames that lick and lap at the floor. I’m not quite sure what the final piece will be: possibly an animation, possibly prints, (maybe even a mezzotint!) but will go back to take more photos in July. For more info please see
http://www.opificiodellarosa.org/en/index-uk.html

Okay I’m not sure if Costanza had white knickers on from Marks and Spencers, but you get the idea…

 

Dance at the Arthouse, Wakefield

I spent one week in Mirfield, installing the show Chasing Tales and teaching a course in Japanese woodblock technique, and one week thinking about my work and doing some dance in an empty studio in the Arthouse, Wakefield.

After making work about the absent body, I think these images are more about presence and solidity.

I’m not sure what they are or mean, how they connect, where they will turn up or how they will develop yet…

 

Chasing Tales opens in Yorkshire

PRESS RELEASE:

Chasing Tales is a solo show of work by artist Wuon-Gean Ho. Created over the past four  years, the show includes original prints, hand made artist books and a stop motion  animation.

The broad themes in the show are in exploring the surface, and revealing what is beneath. A  strong sense of narrative; looking at the identities attached to the face and clothing; and  portraying the space between individuals, link the works in the show.

In the Mask series of prints: large luminous silkscreen prints from 2008, faces are filled with  objects and emotions, and the features of the face are sometimes hidden beneath the    landscapes that they depict. Prints that form the frames of the animation, Lucid Mask,  continue this theme, showing faces that are like windows to another world. When the  individual prints are viewed in the animation, they become a turning, blinking, disembodied  head on which a dreamscape has been projected.

Linocuts from the series Shadow Dance show a procession of empty clothes, headless yet solid, floating on a ghostly grey background and bringing to mind the dress of the Victorian era. These prints portray clothes as abandoned husks, yet in formal photographic poses and with symmetrical relationships. The horizontal line strokes that make up the images recall a grainy televised image. In some, stories can be seen half hidden, almost woven into the folds of the garments.

Artist books made of linked prints provide a sculptural sequence to the works in series. One of them, a double accordion construction of 2m wide called Bamboo Dream shows a silvery monochromatic interior with two sleeping figures who interleave with each other as the book folds close. Another, Devour, shows the progression and seduction of a beast by a ravenous girl.

The show is located in the West Yorkshire Print Workshop, and is a print show that printmakers will enjoy for its range of surprising techniques. Engraved linocut prints resemble etchings, relief linocut prints mimic enormous wood engravings, and silkscreen prints combine the carved line with a brushstroke and mono print technique.

The show runs from 18^th February to 24^th March 2011

Private view and artist talk on Saturday 26^th February 2011, 5pm-7pm

West Yorkshire Print Workshop 75A Huddersfield Road  Mirfield, WF14 8AT

Tel 01924 497646  ::  www.wypw.org

www.wuongean.weebly.com ::  http://www.printplay.wordpress.com

Here are some installation shots of the show…