On a whim, I was asked to make a bookplate for a show at the Davidson Galleries in Seattle, and so I decided to make this bookplate. It is a kimono-wearing girl with my name “Wen Jin” in Chinese Characters on the crests on the her shoulders, who has a book coming out of her head. That is the feeling I get whenever I am completely immersed in a story. There is space on her collar to write a dedication or record things about the book which it belongs to. The print itself is a linocut on Japanese vinyl printed with sakura oil-based relief ink on an albion handpress. The show opens tomorrow 6th January in the Davidson Galleries, Seattle, and runs until the 28th: for more info please check their website: http://www.davidsongalleries.com/subjects/exlibris/exlibris.php

Above: 9 of the 33 prints for the dancing dress animation, which I am currently working on!

This year to come is the year of the Dragon. My dragon is chasing a lucky potato! In China when they write the word for luck upside down it means that luck will come into your life. Here’s wishing lots of love, luck, health and happiness to you all!

In all the excitement of making books I forgot to mention that I will be visiting China for the 3rd Qijiang International Print show, to be held in Chongqing 23-28th November. I will be going with lots of lovely artists including some of my heroes, and I am looking forward to our mini symposium and chance to meet many printmakers from all over the world and China itself.

We have confirmed attendance from David Barker, Nicholas Brown, Karen Butler, Wayne Crothers, Jon Goebel, Heather Huston, Guy Langevin,  Yili Li, Kang Ning, Marica Rizzato, Annika Romeyn, Ema Shin, and Francisco Souto.  I hope to put some pictures here soon!

Have a look at the website http://chinaprintfestival.weebly.com for more information.

Actually the picture above is not from Chongqing, a megapolis of 28 million people which has just incorporated Qijiang into its district, but from a cute little village near Dali in Southwestern China that I visited the last time I went in 2009.

If it’s anything like last year, there’s going to be lots of cake too!!!

(By the way, I’ve yet to go through my pictures from my travels, but here is one: my 7th Uncle showing me a picture of my 3rd Aunty when she was a carefree happy 25 year old bride… Now she sits at home all day watching TV. I really wish I could speak Chinese so that we could connect more… My next challenge I guess!)

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!

What creativity happened this month was mainly in the form of making more frames (more dresses) for the animation that is so clear in my mind. I worked on 10 new prints, which must have been a print every 3 days or so. The parallel lines and repetitive marks are a self imposed language of restriction to see what will happen with a simply pared down undulating line. The whole month’s work culminated with an exhibition in Forman’s Smokehouse Gallery in East London- a huge exhibition space in an impressive olympic site style building- as part of a group show called “The Fishwick Papers” with 50 other members of East London Printmakers.

I was super lucky as the centre of the gallery space is divided with a huge steel framed pair of columns rising up from the factory floor where salmon are smoked, which provided a perfect setting for the dresses as an installation. I put one set of dresses facing outwards and another set facing the cylindrical pipes, which were so shiny they reflected the dresses back again. The dresses look like skins and much like the twisted fish that hang on strings downstairs.

These aren’t good photos- I realise I must go back and take some more that are more descriptive… Anyway, if you get the chance please go and have a look for yourself!  Here is the blurb

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Forman’s Smokehouse Gallery is proud to present “The FishWick Papers”, an exhibition of works by 50 members of the studio East London Printmakers, inspired by the liveliness and colour of the Hackney Wick area and its printmaking heritage. Artists have researched how Hackney Wick presents itself at this moment, the history and future of the area, the many lives of people we have never known and will never know, their trades and stories, and they have also taken inspiration from Fish Island and the Smokehouse itself.

The exhibition presents an extensive range of highly imaginative approaches to most traditional and modern printmaking techniques in a broad spectrum of scales and formats. It includes work by Dolores de Sade (British Institution Award 2011, J K Burt Award 2010, Ede and Ravenscroft Award 2010), Wuon-Gean Ho (Printmakers Council Price 2009 and Birgit Skiold Memorial Trust Prize 2010), Fabio Coruzzi (BBC production 2011 “Show me the Monet” 2011) and Umberto Giovannini (Premio Guidarello 2009).
The exhibition was inspired by William Chamberlain (Forman’s Smokehouse Gallery) and curated by Katja Rosenberg and Charmaine Watkiss (East London Printmakers).

http://smokehousegallery.org/

East London Printmakers (ELP) is a group of artist printmakers based in Hackney, managing a spacious and modern printmaking studio providing an open access facility for a wide range of processes. ELP also runs workshops for anyone who wants to learn printmaking and organise regular exhibitions and events for members.

www.eastlondonprintmakers.co.uk

The exhibition will be open Opening times: Thu – Fri 5-9pm and Sat – Sun 12-5pm and by appointment (07799 411 587).
Formans Restaurant will be open during the private view and at all times during the show.

]]> http://printplay.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/august-in-uk/feed/ 0 printplay IMG_5529 IMG_5532 IMG_5533 http://printplay.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/test-animation-for-costanza/ http://printplay.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/test-animation-for-costanza/#comments Mon, 18 Jul 2011 09:40:46 +0000 printplay http://printplay.wordpress.com/?p=546 ]]>

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!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kalQNSdzCc0

For more information please see http://www.chinaprintfestival.weebly.com

PS this print is from the China Love series I made in 2006 and has nothing to do with the selection criteria of the prints for this next show at all!

Update, we just spent a crazy long day looking at all the work! Was very exciting to check out some beautiful prints and argue merits and demerits of each. Three people is a good number for healthy debate… The Muban Foundation hosted the selection and we still have a lot of work to do, but I was encouraged by the high standard and range of submissions and techniques. Of course an online digital submission is never going to be as accurate and viewing real prints with real paper, but for this, we’d need a bit more time. Quite a bit more time! But a nice idea for future selections, I hope.

http://www.wuongean.com takes you to the website with all my print works since 2007.

On a different note, here are a couple of pictures from my latest book, crossing that bridge about my dress as it danced across a bridge in Portland in 2008…