Raymond Henshaw
Paper Trail
Strule Arts Centre Townhall Square, Omagh, Co Tyrone, BT78 1BL Telephone: +44 28 82245321 / 82247831 Facsimilie: +44 28 82240774 Email: info@struleartscentre.co.uk Internet: www.struleartscentre.co.uk
Strule Arts Centre 9th-24th July 2010
Citizens – ink on paper – 83 x 101 cm
Omagh District Council is delighted to be hosting Paper Trail, an exhibition by artist Raymond Henshaw. This is the first exhibition commissioned and made in Strule Arts Centre, and the development of this new work formed an important part of Raymond’s time as printer in residence here at Strule Arts Centre. It is the inaugural exhibition of work of the print studio. Strule Arts Centre houses the only print studio outside the greater Belfast area in Northern Ireland, and opens up the possibility of using print as a fine art discipline to people living west of the Bann. Thus, Omagh District Council is fulfilling its vision of providing quality facilities to local artists. The Council is developing a reputation for Strule Arts Centre as a centre of excellence for printmaking. This exhibition is an expression of this. Funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland allowed Omagh District council to engage Raymond Henshaw as printer in residence for a six month period. This invaluable funding has allowed Raymond to carry out a range of work in preparing the studio for work, and in introducing the facility to different kinds of users. His residency offered an opportunity for local artists and interested members of the public to make and explore the medium of Serigraphs, popularly known as Screen Printing. He has worked with primary and post primary schools to allow them to access the print studio, giving them the valuable experience of working with an artist. He has hosted workshops with Leonard Chesire Disability Omagh, assisting members to use the studio. He has engaged print experts to hold week workshops in a variety of styles. Crucially, he has also been working with artists living locally, introducing them to the techniques involved in screen printing. In a short space of time Raymond has established the studio as a working space. He has drafted a membership plan that will allow artists to access the workshop further, and has made invaluable contacts nationally to inform them about the workshop. His enthusiasm and infectious love of print has inspired all who have worked with him. The many groups and individuals who have worked with him have all been enriched by the experience. Running alongside Paper Trail is Screen Test, a selection of work from those who took part in workshops with Raymond, a real testament to the achievements of the access programme he has designed and implemented, and an example of the huge talent in the Omagh area. All of these participants have an opportunity now to continue developing their work. With Paper Trail Raymond has created an archive of his time here in Strule Arts Centre. Thanks are due to Amanda Croft for writing the accompanying essay. This will stand as a permanent testament to Raymond’s work here. Just as importantly for Strule Arts Centre, he has left a legacy in terms of a brilliant new facility for local artists, with a state of the art screen printing workshop. Omagh District Council thanks him for his commitment to the project.
Frank Sweeney Head of Arts and Tourism Omagh District Council
‘Paper Trail’ – Autographic art works on paper Raymond Henshaw’s installation, Paper Trail, exhibited at the newly opened screen-print workshop at the Strule Arts Centre in Omagh, is an elegant and conceptually challenging display of work. Henshaw, a fine artist who works across a range of different, yet inter-related media – painting, photography and printmaking, is a highly respected member of the international printmaking community and has worked and exhibited in residencies, workshops and venues across Europe (Barcelona, Berlin, Dublin and Paris), the USA and Africa, most notably in Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Johannesburg. His experience of travel and of working within different cultures coupled with his desire to investigate and push the boundaries of his chosen media informs his personal practice at every level and this current body of work engages with a number of on-going practical and intellectual issues – process, migration (cultural and ideological) and communication. The individual works that comprise this installation – The Raft of the Medusa, a sharp, literary and politically inspired reworking of Gericault’s nineteenth century history painting; the figurative Cultural Containers afloat in the Four Seas/ Archipelago; the subtle, cryptic ‘self-portrait’ in Flying Book; the romantic Inishowen Tree and the poetic allegory of Pan who ‘descended through a colourless void’ – are all examples of contemporary screen-printing at its highest level. The numerous veils of colours employed, particularly of the Black, Red, White and Yellow Seas, are quite sumptuous, almost seducing the viewer into thinking these images are layers of painted pigment but, combining digital photography with latter-day developments in screen-printing technology, these richly hued, multi-layered images are fine-art prints printed onto papers as various as roughly textured cardboard and archival quality parchment. Each print is one of a strictly limited edition, with usually no more than 5 in each edition to ensure quality and aesthetic value – and herein lies a problem for many viewers and potential collectors who tend to equate a ‘single/unique’ image with rarity and high value whilst ‘multiple’ images are equated with availability and hence lower commercial value. In a world inundated by multiple imagery, from magazines and billboards to the ubiquitous internet, the single, unique ‘original’ image, such as a painted canvas, continues to carry a caché for collectors that printmakers, by the very nature of their chosen medium that specialises in producing ‘multiples’, find difficult to dispel. As the print historian Antony Griffiths has commented, “A print is in essence a pictorial image which has been produced by a process which enables it to be multiplied. … An essential feature of prints is their multiplication and this often puzzles people. How, they ask, can a print be an original work … when there are other impressions exactly similar to it?”i From its very outset in the early 15th century when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press and exploited the relief printing techniques of wood cuts and wood engraving to create printed and illustrated books and pamphlets, printmaking as been a three-way marriage of convenience between art, communication and commerce. Before the invention of photography (another form of print-making) in the nineteenth century and, latterly, the world-wide web, the only way to disseminate ideas (political, scientific, literary, artistic, religious, intellectual etc.) and reproduce images quickly and cost-effectively to a wide – local, national, international and ultimately global – audience was by using print-making techniques that developed in tandem with the technologies of each era. The wooden blocks used in relief prints were superseded by the harder wearing metal plates used in the more complex intaglio printmaking techniques of engraving, etching, drypoint, mezzotint and aquatint which in turn became less fashionable with the introduction of planographic techniques such as
lithography, made popular by artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec in the late nineteenth century. Screen-printing, also referred to as serigraphy in America, emerged in the early twentieth century, firstly as a commercial process for the mass production of packaging and advertising and then crossed over into the fine art world through the work of American artists such as Ben Shan, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, and British artists/printmakers like Chris Prater, Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton.ii Whilst the primary role of all these techniques was as a vehicle to disseminate information, artists (painters, architects, sculptors, designers, illustrators etc) quickly realised that printmaking offered them a more effective means to gain wider exposure for their work than merely relying on individual exhibitions – the classic example being Edvard Munch’s painting, The Scream 1893, which was much better known to a wider audience when he translated it into the black and white lithograph in 1895. Additionally, artists realised that they could use these essentially reprographic techniques as another set of artistic tools, in the same way that artists today exploit the camera, film, video and computer. Artists such as Rembrandt, Goya, William Blake, Turner, Picasso, Richard Hamilton and David Hockney have all extended their practice by experimenting and exploiting a variety of print media to create limited edition print runs. What separates ‘original’ art works made using print-making techniques such as lithography, screen-printing or etching for example, from those which utilise photo-mechanical techniques to mass-produce images first created in another medium, such as the innumerable cheap reproductions of famous paintings like Constable’s The Haywain, Turner’s Fighting Temeraire or Hockney’s A Bigger Splash is that the former – artists’ original prints – are autographic works. As clarified by the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers: “There is a clear distinction between images which are conceived from the outset as prints – artists’ original prints – and those which simply reproduce images first conceived in another medium. Sometimes, an artist will independently undertake the whole process from idea to completion; sometimes he or she will enlist the collaboration of a master printer; but always, the concept is the artist’s and the essential control remains with the artist from the beginning of the process to the signing of the scrupulously limited edition.” iii The fact that multiples (albeit limited) of the image exist remains a problem for many people but as Griffiths points out “this conceptual difficulty does not seem to be felt in other fields. No one is worried by the existence of multiple porcelain figures or statuettes cast from the same model” or of bronze sculpture for that matter.iv Some printmakers have responded to this by concentrating on monoprints (single, unique prints) and monotypes (variable editions where each print is subtly different), reinforcing printmaking’s relationship with fine art but which, somewhat perversely, also tends to deny its origins as a reproductive process. Certainly the nomenclature associated with printmaking is complex – there are just so many different techniques with unfamiliar terminology to get to grips with – but the major difficulty appears to rest with the public’s perception of the actual word ‘print’. In the contemporary world it means far too many things – text, type-face, capital letters, posters, photographs, fabric design, stamped images etc., which is why Raymond Henshaw refers to his practice as ‘works on paper’. Henshaw’s current body of work, ‘Paper Trail’ parallels the concerns of international practitioners such as those involved in research-led exhibitions and symposia like ‘The Graphic Unconscious’ show in the recent Philografika 2010 festival in Philadelphia which explored “the ubiquitous presence of printed matter in our visual culture and how concepts like accessibility, democratization, dissemination and transience inform diverse contemporary art practices while expanding the realm of printmaking itself ” and investigated “the key role of print forms and conventions in the circulation of ideas and images that create a public realm and help construct consensus forms such as histories, authorities and individual and community identities”. v
Exploiting screen-printing and digital imagery, the two most accessible, democratic and ubiquitous processes available, Henshaw’s work engages with theories of space, local history, social politics, poetic allegory and references art history. In his literary-based reconstruction of Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa vi with its structure made up of fictitious texts ( Anthony Blair’s ‘Island of Lost Dreams’), a photo-essay on ghetto life by the Brazilian Magnum photographer Miguel Rio Branco and a text by the Dutch architect and designer Rem Koolhaas who designed a ‘barcode flag’ for the European Community comprised of all the flags of the member states, he alludes to the uneven relationship between the State and community, the ideal and the actual, the absorption, abandonment and loss of individual identity within the larger whole. Waterways, such as the intensely hued Four Seas (individually and exotically named for specific colours), that have been ‘pioneered for the expansion of trade, transit of people and culture around the globe’ interest Henshaw and operate as as metaphors for contemporary social migration.vii Set adrift in the gallery installation Archipelago, Henshaw’s photographic images of figures from different cultures (Chinese, Sri Lankan, African) are printed onto roughly textured, flattened and partly constructed cardboard boxes that act as ‘cultural containers’ for ethnic diversity – the overlaying of figures reflecting the mélange of contemporary society. The use of the boxes hints at the packaging of commercial transit and can be seen as a symbol for the journeys undertaken by migratory cultures, but could also refer to the sleeping quarters of the homeless or deprived. Commercial packaging also informs the image and presentation of Inishowen Tree in the ‘window’ of the flattened box – the conceit of the idealised, Henry-esque Irish landscape that has been packaged and advertised ad infinitum for the tourist industry worldwide. Printmaking is about visual communication and throughout history printmakers have always responded positively to technological developments. Its strength and enduring attractiveness to artists has been its ability to absorb, adapt and exploit the technical advances of each age, so although Henshaw, in works such as his witty ‘self-portrait’ Flying Book, obliquely expresses his concern that printed texts and images on paper will have no place in the digital world of the internet, ebooks and the iPad, artists and printmakers like Henshaw will continue to develop printmaking as a creative, expressive set of media, in response to technological challenge. © Amanda Croft June 2010
i
Griffiths, Antony, ‘What is a Print?’ in Prints and Printmaking, British Museum Press, 1996 p.9
ii
A full history of the development of printmaking and a useful glossary of terms can be found in Antony Griffiths text cited above and in Anthony Dyson’s recent text, Printmakers’ Secrets, A & C Black Ltd, 2009.
iii
Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers’ website – http://www.banksidegallery.com
iv
Griffiths, ibid
v
Philagrafika 2010: Philadelphia’s international festival celebrating print in contemporary art. 1.29.10-4.11.10. Full details of its aims and outcomes can be found at http://www.philografika.org
vi
The Raft of the Medusa, 1818-1819, by the French Romantic painter and lithographer Thėodore Géricault, is an over-life-size depiction of the aftermath of the ship wreck of the French naval frigate Méduse which ran aground off the coast of Mauritania on July 5 1816. Around 147 people were set adrift on a hurriedly constructed raft but after 13 days with no food or water only 15 survived, rescued by the crew of the Argos. Gericault’s painting was both celebrated and reviled for depicting the ethnic cross-section of the survivors and the grim reality of their situation. It was intended to be politically provocative, highlighting the incompetence of the French government and its lack of concern for the victims of the disaster. The painting can be seen in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.
vii
Raymond Henshaw, conversation recorded 16/06/2010.
RAYMOND HENSHAW is an artist who has been based in Belfast, Northern Ireland for the last twenty years. During this time he has been a member of a various arts organisations including, Flaxart, Paragon studios, and currently Belfast Print Workshop. He studied in England, where he received a Ma and BA in Painting. He has also received numerous awards from institutions such as, The Arts Council of Northern Ireland, British Council, and Department of Foreign Affairs. He works chiefly across three mediums, painting, photography and printmaking. The ideas behind the imagery in print and photography incorporate narratives relating to his immediate environment. The resulting images are concerned with ideas around a sense of space, social politics, local history, poetic allegories, or reference art history. In paint the language of choice is pure abstraction. Conjuring a visual equivalent for ideas about differing spatial qualities, these are what he likes to refer to as ‘paint-scapes’. Amongst the recent bodies he has completed commissions for are, Royal Hospitals Belfast, for South East Belfast Trust and Belfast City Council. He has completed four book projects to date, three are one off artistic projects variously entitled, ‘Primary colours’, ‘Longitude Latitude’ and ‘The Book Of Evidence’. The forth is a commercially published work entitled ‘‘Time & Motion” which was a collaboration with historian Seamus Lynch exploring identity in County Louth, Ireland. He has exhibited extensively throughout Ireland, and in Europe, Africa and USA. At galleries such as, Fenderesky Gallery, Old Museum, Queen’s University, Belfast, Project Arts Centre, Original Print Gallery, Dublin, Ithaca, New York State, In Bag Factory Johannesburg, The University of Cape Town and Free State University Bloemfontein, South Africa. In Cite Des Arte, Paris, Barcelona, and Berlin, and other locations across Europe. He is the only artist working in Ireland to have had a solo show and exhibit works in the last four ‘Impact’ printmaking bi-annuals. In 2010 as artist in residence for Omagh District Council, he has set up a professional standard Print Workshop within Strule Arts Centre. Later in the year he will curate and exhibit in The Hong Kong Triennial with the show entitled ‘Watershed’.
Landscape/Inishowen Tree – ink on paper – 46 x 70 cm
Abstract Package – ink on paper – 46 x 70 cm
Citizens – ink on paper
Citizens – ink on paper
Archipelago The idyllic shores of the Italian island of Lampedusa. Was littered once more, with the otsam and jetsam of burnt sienna vessels, set adrift, by a nations tumultuous surf.
Whilst in piazza Edison, carriers on enlightenment, titillation, and bisque ballerinas, glided effortlessly from vendor to client.
By passing the renaissance, along via Dante, the polyester dandy strolled. Head shinning I the midday sun, espousing the party line to his magniďŹ cent seven.
Toward the via’s southern end, Stood a box of exotic plumes. Lamp black Prussian, Making mockery against the Naples yellow backdrop.
Archipeligo Installation
Glove Pan descended through a colourless void, To rest upon the crown of his sceptred carousel. Surreal machinations decorated its edges, Welded, bolted, woven and sewn.
Fantastical and macabre, Parading in unison, Illuminated by turn in a dim ickering light. The creatures, dumb, Preening, craning, chomping In the soundless amphitheatre.
Reality, Vivid, Strobing through the cracks of this dreamscape. An electric interloper, A falsetto murmur, Quickly stied, Snuffed by the layered shadowland.
Archipeligo
Yellow Sea – ink on paper – 70 x 101 cm
Black Sea – ink on paper – 70 x 101 cm
Flying Book/Blood – ink on paper – 70 x 100 cm
Flying Book/Spectre – ink on paper – 70 x 100 cm
Raft of Medusa – ink on paper – 70 x 100 cm
EXHIBITIONS S O LO 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2005 2003 2001 2003 1999 1994 1993 1992 1991 1991 1990
2004 Millennium Arts Centre, Portadown, N Ireland. Srule Arts Centre, Monaghan, N Ireland Townhouse Gallery, Belfast, N Ireland. Island Arts Centre, Lisburn, County Down, N Ireland Carlinn Gallery, Couty Louth, Ireland. ‘Primary Colours’, Orange Free State University. Bloemfontien, South Africa. ‘Impact’ printmaking conference exhibition. Cape Town, South Africa. Coe, Claremorris Open, County Mayo, Ireland. Monaghan County Museum, Market House Gallery, ‘Forty shades of Blue’, Monaghan, Ireland. Fordsburg Artists Studios, ‘Temporal Visions’, collaborative works with writers, Phedi Tholmbolo & Molafe Monsenye. Johannesburg, South Africa. Project Arts Centre, ‘Thresholds’, Dublin, Ireland. Limerick City Art Gallery, ‘Thresholds’, Limerick, Ireland. Droichead Arts Centre, ‘Vessel’, Drogheda, Ireland. Down Arts Centre, Downpatrick, N’ Ireland. Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast, N’ Ireland. Stockport Municipal Art Gallery, Cheshire, England. Flowerfields Art gallery, Port Stewart, N’ Ireland. Newry Arts Centre, N’ Ireland.
GROUP 2011 Watershed, Millenium Court Arts Centre, Portadown, N Ireland. 2010 Watershed, Hong Kong Triennale, Hong Kong , China Summer exhibition, Graphic studio, Dublin, Rep of Ireland. 2009 Graphic studio gallery, ’Little Christmas’, Dublin, rep of Ireland. Endgame workshop gallery, ‘Eros’, Quebec, Canada Gordon gallery, Derry. Northern Ireland. Impact, Global dialogue- ‘Tower of Babel’ box set, Bristol, England Strule Arts Center, ‘Passages & Streams’ Omagh, N Ireland. Southern Graphics Conference, Chicago, USA Summer exhibition, Graphic studio, Dublin, Ireland. 2008 Graphic Studio Gallery, Poet & artist collaboration, Dublin, rep of Ireland. Millennium Arts Centre, Portadown, Northern Ireland. Imapct 5.’The book of evidence’ - Tallin, Estonia. Townhouse Gallery, Belfast, N Ireland. Island Arts Centre, Lisburn, County Down, N ireland Pace gallery, Artists involved in Arterial Routes Project. Belfast. Northern Ireland. 2008 ‘Impressions’, Galway arts centre. Ireland 2006 25/25 - BPW at Naughton Gallery, QUB, Belfast. N.Ireland Contemporary prints, Gordon Gallery, Derry. N’Ireland 2005 ‘Mind Body spirit’- Naughton Gallery, QUB, Belfast, N’ Ireland 411 Gallery, Hangzou and Beihsing, Peoples Republic of China. Iontas Centre, Castleblaney, Ireland. Impact - ’Culural Transport’, Akademie de Kunst, Berlin, Germany. Impact -’Culural Transport’, Akademie of Art, Poznan, Poland. ‘6x6’ for Ireland. Hangzhou city, Peoples Republic of China. Sirius Arts Centre Cohb, Cork. Residency exhibition. Cork, Ireland Royal Ulster Academy, Ultster Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland
2003
2002
2001
2000
1997
1996 1995 1994 1992
1991 1989 1988 1987
‘Mind body spirit’ – Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Island Arts Centre, Lisburn, Northern Ireland ’Revealing Ojects’ – Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Dyehouse Gallery, ‘sense of place’, Waterford. Ireland Paragon Studios, Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast. N’ Ireland. Belfast print Workshop, Old Museum Arts Centre. Belfast. N’ Ireland. Clotsworthy arts Centre, N. Ireland. Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast, N’ Irlenad. Original Print Gallery, Dublin, Ireland. Large Print Show, Ormaeu Baths Gallery, Belfast, N’ Ireland. Irish printmakers, Ithaca, New York state, USA. Engineroom Gallery, BPW exhibition, Belfast, N’ Ireland. Fenderesky Gallery, ‘works on paper’, Belfast, N’ Ireland. Printmakers from Ireland, Cite Internationale des Artes, Paris, France. Belfast print Workshop, Riddel Hall, Belfast, N’ Ireland Engineroom Gallery, “paragon studios show’, Belfast, N’ Ireland. Monaghan County Museum, ‘One for the Body’, Flaxart show, Monaghan,. Ireland. Artworking (Dublin) & Bryson House (Belfast), collaborative project with poet Paul Gratten, Fenderesky Gallery, ‘Household Objects’, Belfast, N’Ireland. Barbican Centre, ‘Words & pictures’, collaboration with poet Paul Gratten, London, England. Burgwedel Kunst gallerie, ’40 artists from Ireland’, Hannover, Germany. SIPTU living Art Space, Dublin, Ireland. Droichead Arts Centre, Drogheda, Ireland. Fenderesky Gallery, ‘Determined material foundations, Belfast, N’ Ireland. Fenderesky Gallery, ‘Large Group Show’ & ‘Christmas Show’, Belfast, N’ Ireland. SMAM Gallery, ‘ L’ Europe d’art festival”, Niort, France. Association Catalan Arts Plastic, ‘British Art’, Barcelona, Spain. Impact Gallerie, ‘British Art’, Albi, France. Bonnington Gallery, MA show, Nottingham, England. Manchester City Art Gallery, ‘Transcriptions’, Manchester, England. Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, England. Artists Collective Gallery, ‘Festival show’, Edinburgh, Scotland.
CO L L EC T I O N S Queens University, Belfast. N’ Ireland Allied Irish Bank, Dublin, rep of Ireland Office of Public Works, Dublin, rep of Ireland. Louth County Council. Ireland The Mater Hospital, Belfast. N” Ireland Arts Council of Northern Ireland Royal Hospitals, Belfast, N” Ireland. North East Belfast Trust, N Ireland South East Belfast Trust. N’ Ireland A Variety of private collections in Europe & Africa AC K N O W L E D G E M E N T S I would like to thank all staff at Strule arts Centre who have been generous and supportive throughout the term of my post. I would especially like to thank to The Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and Omagh District Council for their invaluable support of contemporary Arts projects.