Collaboration with Stuart Bowditch drawing to a close. Has been very enjoyable and am looking forward to posting up the results as this blog has been too quiet!!

Currently working in collaboration with Stuart Bowditch. http://www.stuartbowditch.co.uk/index.html

Is there potential exploring sound within printmaking…..??

Proofs of the zinc plates created using the Thames Estuary. Check out some better images at http://www.lsull.com/the-print-project.html

Sandy Gellis - http://www.sandygellis.com/spring.html

Gail Catlin - http://www.capetowncreatives.co.za/gail_catlin/index.html

Following on from my earlier test I have reapproached the way in which I wanted to incorporate the Thames into this project. Rather than using the sea water to corrode the plate I again used reclaimed zinc plate but this time I added a thin soft ground covering the plate. I placed the plates in at high tide and let the sea do its work, gently and roughly extracting the sensitive ground.

After placing the plates into a safe etch solution here are the resulting plates. Keep posted to see the proofs soon

Using some reclaimed zinc I went out to see if I could etch a plate using the Thames. I was aiming for some harsh corrosive marks that would hold some ink at the very least but the salty water of the Thames had no affect on the zinc.

While watching the plates in the water, I noticed the waves were gently pushing stones and objects over the top of the plates surface and dragging it back again. Perhaps by applying a soft ground and placing them in again will capture this contact between the plate and the sea objects.

This approach will also solve another paradox I contemplated while preparing this experiment, that of what marks to apply onto the plate. Any form of representation or abstraction felt insignificant against this act of placing the plate into the Thames and this new approach will rid this issue and hopefully lead to an aesthetic that is different from my previous work

Fine weather and a kind donation has made it possible to take the first steps in developing a new body of work. The Print Project would like to thank Fawkes and Lewis ltd for giving our print room off-cuts of various metals, easing the financial pressures of experimentation crucial to the success of this project. Posts later in the week shall reveal what I have been developing these past couple of weeks since the print projects launch

In an attempt to push the process of print making I made this short film which I titled ‘Print Press.’ The video itself acts as a proposal to my thoughts and what I wish to develop.

The video is of a brief experiment I carried out in response to an exhibition titled ‘Anti-Photography’ held at Focal Point and Beecroft galleries earlier this year. The show included a range of practioners from John Hilliard to Walead Beshty and Wolfgang Tillmans with the aim of highlighting photography in “the expanded field,” referring to the revilement of conceptual processes.

What I was thinking at the time of making this film was the idea of print existing in the “expanded field” and I made a direct attempt to create a work that revealed the conceptual mechanics of the printing process. A good example that illustrates this thought is John Hilliard’s ‘Camera as Projectile’ series where he throws a camera into the air to capture an image. The main difficulty I came across with the experiment was figuring out a way in which it could function as a work. I felt that a big weakness was that it lacked some form of outcome, aesthetic or anti-aesthetic. I also became concerned that abandoning the discourses of image making would lead to a confused art practice and one which would not be true to my personal interests.

Feeling unsatisfied with this I began further researching the Anti-photography exhibition and came across a review by Laura Mclean-Ferris on Art Review. She highlights in her writing that “it is concerns with the photographic image as a carrier of colour, texture and emotional and seductive sensation that seems to unite much of the work.” This quote challenges the references to postmodern conceptual thought, which the show used as its foundations and brings to attention the potential qualities of an image. McLean-Ferris writes that putting film through X-ray scanners makes Walead Beshty’s prints “induce intellectual and aesthetic pleasures.” The images that result take the form of eye-pleasing, abstract colours.

It is this tension between the conceptual mechanics and the discourses of image making that I aim to develop and I aim to come out with some creative and ambitious approaches to print making, creating a body of work that is true to the interests of my practice.