Female artists and the medium of print
A Studio 3 Gallery exhibition 16 May - 19 June 2014
Acknowledgements:
At the University of Kent, our sincere thanks are due to:
This exhibition would not have possible without the kind generosity and support of artists, art dealers, galleries, lenders, curators and sponsors. We are extremely grateful to:
Angela Whiffen Creative Campus Dennis Smith Estates Department Dr Grant Pooke Jayne Thompson John Buckingham Katie McGown Katie Scoggins Liz Moran, Director of The Gulbenkian Dr Louise Naylor Professor Martin Hammer Michael Healey Dr Michael Newall Dr Paloma Atencia-Linares Paul Sharp Rachel Evans Sam Westbury Dr Sian Stevenson The Kent Print Collection Victoria Hart
Adam Gallery, London Dr Alicia Foster Alyson Hunter Anita Klein Anne Desmet Brook Gallery, Devon CCA Galleries, Surrey Charlotte Cornish Charlotte Hodes Chinfineart Clive Botting Fine Art, Hythe Dawn Cole Fiona de Bulat The Hepworth Wakefield Gill Saunders, V&A Museum Hawkswells of Canterbury Hilton Fine Art, Bath Ian Swatman (saxophone) and Chris Manley (keyboard) Idbury Prints, Cotswolds Julian Page Fine Art, London Liliane Lijn Marlborough Fine Art, London Osborne Samuel, London Professor Paul Coldwell Dr Paul Laidler Paul Stolper, London Pratt Contemporary, Sevenoaks The Mead Gallery, The University of Warwick Steve Allen Art Transport Stoneman Gallery, Cornwall The Beaney, Canterbury The Bohemian, Deal V&A Print Department Victor Wynd Fine Art, London William Pryor, The Raverat Archive
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Plus, all the History and Philosophy undergraduates and postgraduates that have assisted us and, especially to, Studio 3 Gallery’s curator, Dr Ben Thomas. Photographic credits: The authors and publisher have made all reasonable efforts to contact copyright holders for permission, and apologise for any omissions or errors in the form of credits given.
Female artists and the medium of print
A Studio 3 Gallery exhibition 16 May to 19 June 2014 Curated by Frances Chiverton and Lynne Dickens
“Making prints has always excited, engaged and intrigued me - the mastery of techniques and the handling of materials; the exploration of the infinite and varied forms of mark making; building images layer upon layer; the satisfaction of process; the potential for multiples; and the thrilling element of the unexpected. I feel that printmaking has deeply informed my practice as an artist, not only through creating editions of prints and making monoprints but also by influencing and shaping my approach to painting.� Charlotte Cornish Artist
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Co n t e n t s
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Introduction by Dr Alicia Foster
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Curators’ foreword
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Making a difference, women artists as printmakers by Gill Saunders, Senior Curator (Prints), V&A Museum
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List of prints begins (alphabetically by first name)
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Beauty in art, an unfashionable concept? by Anita Klein, artist and printmaker
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A life in print by Anne Desmet, artist and printmaker
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Free lectures by leading experts
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The art of deception by Dawn Cole, artist and Kent alumna
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Hexagram 21 - Shih Ho – biting through by Liliane Lijn, kinetic artist and printmaker
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Reflections on working with Paula Rego by Professor Paul Coldwell
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Selected bibliography
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A final word
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Alicia Foster Alicia Foster trained as an art historian before becoming a novelist. Her first novel Warpaint (Penguin, Figtree, 2013) tells the story of four women artists employed by the British government in 1942-3: some are making paintings to inspire the Bulldog spirit while one creates Black propaganda mendacious, cruel, and obscene - to undermine the enemy. This is her third book. Previous publications include a monograph drawing on her doctoral research Gwen John (Tate/Princeton, 1999), and the first complete survey of women represented in Tate collections Tate Women Artists (Tate, 2004). Her next novel is set in the early 1920s in Yorkshire and will tell the story of a violent collision between the forces of modernity and reaction.
I n t r o d u c t i o n by D r A l icia F o s t e r
W
hen I wrote my survey of the work of women artists in Tate collections (Tate 2004) pressure of space meant it was impossible to include those whose medium was print. I had to list their names and dates only in the back of the book, regretfully imagining a bigger volume in which they could all have been properly represented, their work held up to view. It is wonderful now to see the results of the efforts of the curators of this exhibition to bring women’s work in this field to the fore, to allow us to see a body of it, to walk from one image to the next intrigued by the bite and resonance of a line, by planes of dense colour and the most subtle gradations of tone, by the resolution and scale possible in the digital age, and by the astonishing skill and imaginative reach with which these artists have used the processes of print to their own powerful ends. The history of women artists as printmakers is distinct from that of their male contemporaries. There were far fewer women artists than men in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, and early women practitioners were, for the most part, those wealthy aristocratic ladies who had the funds and time to purchase the specialist equipment and indulge in the expert private tuition needed to learn how to make engravings, etchings and aquatints. The late Nineteenth Century saw the great influx of women from the middle and upper classes into art schools for professional training, and the emergence of some great artists in the print medium such as Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot - each represented in this exhibition by an exquisite drypoint - dates from this time. Printmaking was taught in art school then as a practice useful to the artist not only in terms of the development of their art, but as a crucial medium in terms of employment, it was much in demand as a skill used to illustrate magazines and newspapers before the rise of photography. As we move into the Twentieth Century - women by now an equal presence in art schools, if not in establishing careers as artists - the status and role of print as a fine art practice shifts and changes. No longer with an over-riding commercial imperative, print becomes at different moments a medium
resonant of an earlier, more seemingly authentic world, a critical reaction to modernity, hence the renaissance of wood engraving in the nineteen-twenties and thirties seen here in the work of one of its most distinguished exemplars, Gwen Raverat, and paradoxically a medium seen as resonant of mass production and the multiple rather than the archaic, elite and hand-made, democratic both in its conceptual essence and its reach. What has remained unchanged, however, over the centuries is the desire of artists, and therefore women artists, to engage with printmaking, to work with and against its technical demands and limitations, just as poets continue to choose to submit themselves to the sonnet form. Hence in this exhibition we can move from the stunning and complex Biblical engravings of Diana Ghisi, made in 1575, to one of Sarah Lucas’s iconic digital print self-portraits made over four hundred years later in 2011. In common with Tate Women Artists, this exhibition does not attempt to be an exhaustive survey of all women printmakers, or to make claims for a separable sphere of women’s work in this field with distinct ‘feminine’ characteristics. Although cross-currents and works in sympathy by different women might appear, equally there are great dissonances between some of the works. What becomes apparent looking at the prints on show here is the sheer exhilarating range of women artists' contribution to the medium. It is, then, as the curators intended, a starting point for debate and an opportunity for enjoyment of what women artists have done in printmaking, and for speculation about what they might make in the future. Dr Alicia Foster Novelist and Art Historian
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U n d e r e x p o s e d – t h e e x h i b i t i o n t h at ai m s to c h a l l e n g e o p i n i o n
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he term ‘exposure’ is not exclusive to photography. In fact, when it comes to the arts, there are many areas that are ‘underexposed’, but none so prominently as female group exhibitions and the medium of the fine art print. Underexposed surveys the ways in which over 40 prominent female artists have used the medium of print over the last two centuries (and beyond). It features painters and sculptors, and highlights how print relates to their primary focus. It also looks at those who are or have been printmakers first and foremost, and why they have chosen to work in that particular artistic medium. At the same time, the exhibition examines the different print types – from more traditional wood or metal engravings, etchings, lithographs and linocuts to more recent methods such as screenprints, photogravure and digitally produced work – as well as the different subject matter chosen by the various female artists represented. Our initial idea was prompted by the fact that there are currently only seven prints, out of about 200, in the Kent Print Collection by females. We felt that approximately 3.5% was under-representative of the collection as a whole.1 There are also parallels with Henry Tate’s original collection (now known as Tate Britain). Of the 253 works in 1897, only five were by women artists.2 If we look at other institutions both here in the UK and overseas today, we would most likely find a similar picture. We also felt that there was a shortage of focus on femaleonly exhibitions, apart from a show planned at the Serpentine Gallery.3 Furthermore, when we researched past exhibitions that have been held at Studio 3 Gallery to date, we discovered there had not been an exhibition focusing solely on the female perspective.4 Out of fifteen previous exhibitions curated at the University of Kent since 2007, excluding degree shows, only five have included prints by female printmakers (Dreams and
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There are now seven prints currently in the KPC by: Ana-Maria Pacheco (2), Tracey Emin (1), Diana Ghisi (1), Stella Vine (1), Georgina North (1) and Liliane Lijn (1). Foster, A., Tate Women Artists, Tate Publishing: London, 2004. Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos, 13 February - 7 April 2013. See Studio 3 website for list of past fifteen exhibitions.
Nightmares in 2007, Krikey! in 2010, Shadows of the Wanderer in 2011, Double Take in 2012 and Two-Faced Fame in 2013).5 Looking back to our first year here at the University of Kent, we both remembered Dr Michael Newall in a Shock of the Now: Themes in Contemporary Art lecture asking the question: “Why are there no female artists in the canon?” It was a question that neither of us had considered before, but that resonated with us. He referred us to Linda Nochlin’s 1971 essay on this theme asking, “Why have there been no great women artists?” which Cynthia Freeland (2001) discusses.6 Nochlin was not actually saying that there were no great women artists, merely that they had not been acknowledged in the same way that their male counterparts had due to the social and economic facts of their pasts. She also pointed out that where they had been acknowledged, they often experienced prejudice. Judith Brodsky (1976) raises a similar issue about women printmakers, as she claims that very little had been written about this subject up to that point.7 Brodsky states that generally people think of Impressionist artist Mary Cassatt as being the first female printmaker but in fact, this is not true – she ascribes that position to Diana Ghisi8 back in the 1500s, informing us that Ghisi produced sixty-two prints during her lifetime (1530-1612).9 Not only was Ghisi famous for her engravings during the Sixteenth Century, but she was also recorded as the first woman permitted to sell her engravings under her own name. Thus, it was an exciting discovery that we already possess a Ghisi print in our Kent Print Collection.
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Georgina North’s, Midsummer Night’s Dream in Dreams and Nightmares in 2007, Tracey Emin’s Dogbrains, More Margate More Past, But Yea and Hades, Hades, Hades and Ana-Maria Pacheco’s Comedia and Dark Events 1-7 in Krikey! in 2010, and Comedia and Dark Events 1-7 by Ana Maria Pacheco in Shadows of the Wanderer in 2011. Freeland, C., Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp.83-99. Brodsky, J.K., 'Some Notes on Women Printmakers' in Art Journal, Vol. 35, No. 4, Summer 1976, p.374. Or Diana Scultori or Diana of Mantuana, as she is sometimes referred to. Brodsky, J.K., op.cit., p.374.
Brodsky names quite a few other sixteenth-century and seventeenth-century female printmakers including the painter Sofonisba Anguissola (1535-1620), Isabella Quattrepomme (1648-1711),10 Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665) and Anna Maria van Schurman (1606-1678) who made prints in various European countries. Brodsky also mentions that Professor Ann Sutherland Harris, a current art historian, in a tentative listing of seventeenth-century women printmakers, includes four working in France, 12 in Italy, 14 in Germany and the Low Countries, and one in Portugal. Then, by the Eighteenth Century, Brodsky reports that, as well as professional female printmakers, women in aristocracy also took up the practice as a hobby, citing Mme. De Pompadour, the Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria, Princess Elisabeth Christine of BraunschweigWolfenbuttel, Charlotte Napoleon (daughter of Joseph Bonaparte) and our very own Queen Victoria, who did at least 34 etchings, and some of these are in the Avery Collection.11 So, by the time we get to Mary Cassatt, we can see there has already been a whole string of skilled female printmakers. We are delighted to be able to include a print by Cassatt from the collection at the V&A Museum, to complete the circle. For this exhibition, we decided to focus primarily on twentieth- and twenty-first-century artists partly because the older works are less readily available, and harder to obtain when you have less than a year to curate an exhibition. It is important to note also that Underexposed is not meant to generalise but to focus on a specific category and exploration. This exhibition is partial, a snapshot, but in our opinion addressing a gap. Like the judges and four female nominees for the highly coveted Turner Prize in 1997 – the only time there has been women-only nominees – our primary aim is to highlight some of the many achievements of some simply amazing women artists.12 It must be a concept that resonates with others in the art world, as the exhibition has received a lot of support from
10 A pupil of her father Henri Cheron and one of the first women to be admitted to the French Academy. 11 Brodsky, J.K., op. cit., p.375. 12 Glaister, D., The Guardian Online, Wednesday 18 June 1997.
professional curators in both national and local institutions and in higher education, as well as a number of artists, artists’ groups, dealers, galleries and members of the art media – and we would like to extend our sincere thanks to each and every one of them. This has enabled us to include a wide range of prints from some very high profile artists, including no less than eight Royal Academicians. In addition to which, we are very fortunate to have secured for the art-going public such a comprehensive programme of free talks, all being given by leading experts. These are designed to complement the exhibition and provide further insight – and we hope they will draw a wider audience from right across Kent, London and the Southeast (if not further away). However, none of this would have been possible at all without our Lecturer (and Studio 3 Gallery’s Curator), Dr Ben Thomas’ backing, inspiration and encouragement, for which we are incredibly grateful. Frances Chiverton and Lynne Dickens Co-curators of Underexposed exhibition
Diana Ghisi, Christ and The Adultress, c.1575, engraving, Kent Print Collection.
Not illustrated in this catalogue Diana Ghisi, The Holy Family, after Raffaellino da Reggio, c.1575, engraving, kindly on loan from Dr Ben Thomas.
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Ma k i n g a d iff e r e n c e : wo m e n a r t i s t s a s p r i n t m a k e r s
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he title of this exhibition – ‘Underexposed’ – is nicely ambiguous; it refers of course to the work of women artists in general, but it applies equally to prints themselves. Until relatively recently fine art prints were not intended for public display but for private appreciation. They were kept in albums and portfolios, to be browsed by their owners and shared with friends. Even now exhibitions of prints tend to be limited to a few museums and specialist galleries. It is also the case that many of the terms which have traditionally been associated with prints – small-scale, modest, intimate, personal – have been applied to the work of women artists too, often with dismissive or derogatory intent. Yet when we look without prejudice at the printed work of female artists, we see works which demonstrate originality, innovation, skill and ambition, and we find women making a difference as artists and as printmakers. Even those who have worked within the narrow parameters of what have been traditionally ‘women’s’ subjects – portraits of women, mothers and children, animals, flowers and still life, domestic interiors – have often succeeded in
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establishing a professional career, a reputation and a place in art history. Others have found success by resisting such categorisation: choosing non-gendered subject matter, working on an ambitious scale, or leading technical and conceptual innovation. There is no over-arching thesis that can unite women artists (or printmakers) over two centuries, but each artist here demonstrates a resonant contribution to art in print. Women artists, as members of artistic groups and art movements, are often seen as acolytes to their male peers, followers rather than innovators. However, if we look at the work of Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, amongst the Impressionists, or at Dorothea Tanning and Leonora Carrington, aligned with the Surrealists, we can identify their difference and originality. For example, although Morisot’s (1841-1895) work in print, like her paintings, is limited in range thanks to the social and cultural constraints of the time, it shows a fresh fluency and informality which influenced not only the artists around her, but others who came after. Some have worked with print in ways which subtly shift public perception of the value of the medium itself. Bridget Riley (born 1931), best known as a painter, has also made screenprints which are masterpieces of nuance and craft, and demonstrate the unique qualities and capacities of the medium. A print such as Nineteen Greys is so complex it took a year to proof and print the edition, and it is in many ways a greater achievement, technically and conceptually, than the paintings it superficially resembles. But her prints are never direct reproductions of her works on canvas; scale is critical to her work, and to the viewer’s experience of visual sensation, so each print is conceived as a print. Riley thus overturns traditional expectations of print as simply a reproductive medium, or a poor relation to painting, and shows definitively that it is a challenging medium for creating independent original works of art. Innovation by women artists is often overlooked, or attributed to a male mentor, but there are plenty of instances of women breaking the rules, or experimenting with new methods and processes on their own account. Birgit Skiöld (1923-1982) is one such: she was a pioneer, championing
the status of print as fine art, and experimenting with techniques, often in innovative combinations or applications. She established a formidable reputation and she was also a respected teacher who expanded opportunities for those who wanted to make prints when she established the first openaccess print workshop for artists in London. We must remember that prints can make a difference in the wider world too. Prints – even fine art prints – often have a role in social and political discourse. This is exemplified in the graphic work of the German artist Käthe Kollwitz (18671945). She chose to focus on drawing and printmaking, inspired by the views of etcher Max Klinger, who said that painting was best suited to “the glorification, the triumph of the world” whereas prints and drawings were better suited to the description of “resignation…misery…the pitiful creature in his eternal struggle…” Her marriage to a doctor brought her into close contact with hardship and misery in one of the poorest districts of East Berlin. Here, her characteristic themes were established - the struggles of the working class, the lives of proletarian women, and a powerful anti-war polemic - all represented without sentimentality in eloquently sombre lithographs and etchings. Her graphic exposure of the social evils of her time attracted official criticism, and culminated with Nazi condemnation of her work, which was consequently removed from public view. Women have used print in countless different ways – as part of an autobiographical enterprise, as a means to explore the role of women in society, to depict cautionary tales, and social satires. Through print they have recuperated those methods and styles so often dismissed and devalued as ‘feminine’, by embracing illustration, design and decoration, and in so doing they have found the means to showcase their own technical skills and creativity. Using print in all its myriad guises, women have made many ‘differences’ and continue to do so, to the extent that ‘difference’ itself is now unremarkable.
Berthe Morisot, Jeann-Marie, c.1888, drypoint, 24.9 x 32.4 cm, kindly on loan from the Victoria & Albert Museum Print Collection.
Gill Saunders Senior Curator (Prints), V&A Museum More information: www.vam.ac.uk
Mary Cassatt, Tea, 1890, drypoint, 18.1 x 15.6 cm, kindly on loan from the Victoria & Albert Museum Print Collection.
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Alyson Hunter, Soho Shopfront I, 1999, photo-etching, 24 x 30 cm, kindly on loan from the artist.
Not illustrated in this catalogue Alison Wilding RA, Starlings I, 2005, lithograph, 37 x 45 cm, kindly on loan from Brook Gallery, Devon.
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Alison Wilding RA, Starlings 2, 2005, lithograph, 37 x 45 cm, kindly on loan from Brook Gallery, Devon.
Alyson Hunter, Gypsy Boy, Camden Lock, 1987 (AP), photogravure, 25 x 35 cm, kindly on loan from the artist.
Ana Maria Pacheco, Domestic Scene No. 10, 2000, etching and drypoint, 20 x 26.8 cm, kindly on loan from Pratt Contemporary, Sevenoaks.
Ana Maria Pacheco, Domestic Scene No. 5, 2000, etching and drypoint, 20 x 26.8 cm, kindly on loan from Pratt Contemporary, Sevenoaks.
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B e au t y i n a r t: a n u n fa s h i o n a b l e co n c e p t ?
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uring the course of this exhibition, I will be giving a lecture about ‘beauty in art’. An unfashionable concept I know, but something that has concerned me throughout my adult life. Grayson Perry, in his recent Reith lectures on art, eloquently explained how in the Twenty-first Century we have reached the end of the exploration of the question “what is art?” Starting with Marcel Duchamp, and throwing in a good measure of twentieth-century relativism, we now believe, and dare not question the assumption that anything is art if an artist says it is. And anyone and everyone is an artist if they choose to be. I believe that this is a mistake, and that the word ‘art’ has been hijacked. I believe that it is possible to judge what is art and what isn’t, and I also believe that it is possible to judge if art is good or not. For more than 30 years I have devoted most of my waking hours to striving to make a good piece of art, and I know that
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this is a difficult task. If anything and everything is art, then why has this been so difficult, and why am I never satisfied with what I produce? The simple answer is that anything and everything is not art. My own definition of art returns it to its pre-Renaissance function. Not about the personality of the artist, but primarily to communicate visually. Something best done by someone with a facility at drawing or sculpting learnt through years of practice, although possibly achieved by a combination of fluke and emotional honesty by children and the untrained. Just like a carpenter, a doctor or a teacher, an artist is someone who uses his or her skills to do a job well – and that job is to make emotionally moving objects to visually enrich the lives of others. Of course the personality of the artist is expressed in the work. The artist has no choice about this, and this is what is meant by the word style. Style is not something an artist invents, or searches for, it is the way he or she communicates. It is like our speaking voices, unique and recognisable, but for the most part, out of our control. Style is where taste comes in to the judgment of the merits of a particular piece of art. Some people like some styles more than others, just as we fall in love with and make friends with each other in our own individual ways, so we choose our favourite artworks for reasons of personal taste and resonance. And yet, there are some things we all, as human beings, have in common, and I want to argue that a quest to surround ourselves with visual beauty is primal: that we need beauty, like we need air and water – and an artist is a person who can satisfy that need. Beauty in an object can be defined as something that satisfies its function simply and absolutely. Mathematicians and scientists often say that equations are beautiful. When Einstein discovered that e=mc2 he knew it was true and more beautiful than a page full of complicated formulae. So it follows that a beautiful work of art simply moves us. Like e=mc2, it touches a nerve, says something powerful and true, and communicates feelings that are often impossible to describe so well any other way. So if beauty in visual art is a powerful and simple communication of a part of what it is to be human, can a depiction or communication of negative and difficult emotions be beautiful? I believe the answer is yes. Take
the despair of a late Rothko painting, or the anguish of Rogier Van der Weyden’s Deposition. To my mind these are unutterably beautiful paintings. This is where beauty and prettiness part company, and yet, if we try to analyse what moves us, why we feel what we feel so powerfully, there are underlying forces at work in these paintings. Every figurative painting (or drawing or print) is two things at once. It is a window, usually rectangular, through which we can see an image of the world. But, at the same time, it is also an object: a piece of paper, or canvas, or panel, with a texture, size and physical presence in a room. It is bigger or smaller than us; it is heavy or light, colourful or monochrome. We often forget this when we look at figurative pictures, because we are looking at what they are ‘of’. But the physical presence, the ‘object-ness’ is having a powerful effect on our emotions. When it is a beautiful object, by which I mean that its shapes and colours are harmoniously designed and balanced, the mood of the subject matter affects us more powerfully. It is as if we are released from the gnawing discomfort of ugliness, of things ‘not looking quite right’, and can therefore wholeheartedly be engulfed by the emotion that the artist is expressing. Some artists design beautiful pictures completely instinctively; others have tried to make up rules for good composition. Certainly basic composition can be taught, but the magic of a beautiful piece of visual art is not something that can be predicted or made with rules alone. It is, in my experience, a slow and often painful process of drawing, standing back, correcting, changing, standing back, destroying, and changing again – until suddenly it finds a way to be right and beautiful, in a different way from any other picture before it. This moment is like putting the final piece in a jigsaw puzzle. Suddenly everything is still, and you know that everything, which had been fluid and undecided until that point, is in the only place it can be in. Of course some artists have subverted this truth. Many great artists have sought to communicate discomfort and even romantic excitement by upsetting our need for harmony. Lucien Freud’s nudes can disturb us not only with their piercing and raw humanity, but also because their
compositions are uncomfortable, making our gaze slip off the edge of the canvas, confronting us with our own expectations. But this is done knowingly. Not because Freud did not understand composition, but because he did so well that he could use it to convey his own worldview. For many years now, the consensus among opinionformers has been that art should reflect the pain and suffering in our lives, and that to make art about joy, or to aim to create beauty, is necessarily superficial and unworthy. The word ‘decorative’ is usually used, with a sneer, to dismiss something pleasing to the eye, while ‘challenging’ and ‘shocking’ seem to confer status on the most trivial stunt. Just as it is a shallow mistake to assume that tragedy is a greater literary form than comedy, so it is thoughtless to assume that ugliness in visual art is more profound than beauty. Sadly, it often takes real tragedy or loss to make us appreciate what we had, to count our blessings. Surely it is a worthy aim of art to help us do this before it is too late? And surely, just as it is arrogant and narrow-minded not to marvel at beauty in nature, it is human and heroic to wish to surround ourselves with, and to create beautiful art.
Anita Klein PPRE Hon RWS Artist and printmaker More information: www.anitaklein.com
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Anita Klein PPRE Hon RWS, Goddess of the Pear Tree, 2013, linocut, 40 x 60 cm, kindly on loan from the artist.
Anita Klein PPRE Hon RWS, The Spider, 2013, linocut, 40 x 60 cm, kindly on loan from the artist.
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Anne Desmet RA RE, Babel Tower in Pieces, 1999, wood engraving, 7.5 x 10.8 cm, edition of 45, kindly on loan from the artist.
Anne Desmet RA RE, Panorama, 1995, wood engraving, 12.8 x 37.2 cm, edition of 40, kindly on loan from the artist.
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A l if e i n p r i n t
F
ollowing a year in Rome (1989/90) as a Rome Scholar in Printmaking, the focus for my art became the multilayered nature of cities where ancient ruins co-exist with twenty-first-century apartments and TV aerials. The visual impact of intense Italian sunlight on Rome’s dramatic architecture – coupled with a sense of the weight and extent of the city’s history – were inspiring. Via detailed wood engravings and linocuts of architectural subjects from Rome’s ancient Coliseum to London’s Olympic stadium, I aim to create a sense of the interweaving and passage of years of history – a type of metamorphosis that is a recurring theme in my work. As well as editioned relief prints, I also make printed collages in two and three dimensions. Printed collage enables me to push architectural motifs in unexpected, often surprising directions, allowing a building or an environment to take on a life and invented identity of its own. Collage offers me an endless experimental playground – involving reconfigured print fragments assembled, into new compositions, onto diverse surfaces including seashells, stones, mirror shards, roofing slate, convex glass, ceramic tiles and painted wood panels. My prints Panorama and Bergamo (fragments) in this exhibition are works that, like my collages, address the way in which fragments of an implied whole can create a sense of a larger, perhaps lost, environment, with an ambiguous sense
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of time. They might suggest a contemporary yet also ancient place with implications or echoes of other cities, historic or future cultures: Pompeii before Vesuvius’ catastrophic eruption, London as un-reclaimed marshland or in a post-apocalyptic era – the very fabric of brick and stone being eroded and/or regenerated. Bruegel the Elder’s Tower of Babel painting of 1563 directly inspires all my Babel tower prints and collages – although many other related tower images, historic and contemporary, also feed the mix. My late father was Belgian, so Bruegel’s tower set in the town of Antwerp has particular family associations. The biblical account of Babel seems highly relevant today, in our post-9/11 world, as it evokes a sense of the intense, soaring, timeless beauty of mankind’s most ambitious constructions; the vulnerable yet aspirational qualities of towers; and, by extension, the ambition and fragility of human dreams. These are thoughts that may be conveyed in works of imposing size or in the intense intimacy of a miniature, so I find I am increasingly occupied with diversities of scale. Each of my five, circular, Babel Flower collages (all of which were purchased by the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, for its permanent collection, following my second museum retrospective exhibition, hosted there in 2008) are nearly 40 inches in diameter, whereas Babel Tower in Pieces, the engraving in this exhibition that inspired that series, is just three inches tall. I regularly look at the work of past printmakers, men and women alike, including: Dürer, Hiroshige, Piranesi, Edward Wadsworth, C R W Nevinson, Paul Nash, Lill Tschudi, Gertrude Hermes and Monica Poole. Amongst contemporary artists, it is often women artist-printmakers whose work captures my attention. I’m inspired by the Op Art abstractions of Bridget Riley; the epic woodcut land- and cityscapes of Emma Stibbon RA; the layered, semi-sculptural body-prints of Marilene Oliver; the joyously Fragonard-esque paper-cuts, prints and ceramics of Charlotte Hodes; the infinitely subtle, layered, abstract woodblock prints of Rebecca Salter; and the elaborate photographic lightboxes of Emily Allchurch. My non-printmaking influences are, primarily, Giotto, Piero della Francesca, Masaccio, Bellini, Van Eyck and Bruegel and other
luminaries of the early Italian and Northern Renaissance whose frescoes and panel paintings offer endless inspiration. I was born in 1964 with a congenital hip dislocation, which resulted in my having to spend long periods in hospital until I was 18. I spent those months making cartoons of other children on the wards – or detailed studies of whatever was within sight: the light bulb above my bed, my hands and feet, a bowl of cherries... Later, in the early 1980s, as an undergraduate at the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford, my tutor Jean Lodge RE (a Hayter-trained woodcut artist and etcher) introduced me to wood engraving, amongst other print processes – which she felt would expand my drawing vocabulary in rewarding directions. After I graduated from the Ruskin (and later from Central School of Art, London, where I took a postgraduate printmaking diploma in 1987-8), I stuck with wood engraving and linocutting, which seemed to offer versatile means to develop my ideas that still, today, begin in detailed sketchbook studies and photographs. Wood engraving offers the endlessly compelling prospect of creating images that literally carve light out of darkness. Also, printmaking offers a particular graphic intensity, potential for endless invention, the facility to invest time and detail in images that can be editioned and widely disseminated. Prints also remain largely affordable art that gets into the homes of far more people than do unique works in other media. Printmaking has enabled me to show in museums and galleries worldwide and has allowed me to share my work and thus my ideas with those of other artists, internationally, and all for the price of a few mailing tubes. In a career as a printmaker spanning some 25 years to date, 15 of which were concurrently spent as editor of Printmaking Today magazine, I have never experienced gender discrimination within printmaking exhibitions, though printmaking itself is still often treated as the poor relation at the feast of all other art forms. Print galleries, for instance, are still barred from showing at London’s annual Frieze Art Fair. Yet the traditional labels for types of work are fast disappearing in this age of mixed-media art and artists whose working methods now periodically change completely, depending on the concepts being expressed. Gender discrimination does, however, persist
within the British and international art world in which the predominance of dealers, curators and critics remain male – one only has to look at the relative prices commanded by blue-chip artists, male and female, to be aware of this. That fact should not, however, deter any committed woman from pursuing life as an artist: the rewards – intellectual, financial or emotional – can repay all the effort that choice involves. Anne Desmet RA RE Artist and printmaker More information: www.annedesmet.com
Anne Desmet RA RE, Bergamo (fragments), 1992, wood engraving, 28.5 x 8.2 cm, edition of 25, kindly on loan from the artist.
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Anya Gallaccio, White Ice (Diptych), 2002, screenprint on mirror acrylic with glitter, 60 x 83.5 cm, kindly on loan from Julian Page, London.
Anya Gallaccio, Black Ice (Diptych), 2002, photomechanical etching, 60 x 83.5 cm, kindly on loan from Julian Page, London.
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Barbara Hepworth DBE, November Green (from Opposing Forms), 1970, screenprint, 77.5 x 58.4 cm, kindly on loan from The Hepworth Wakefield Art Collection.
Barbara Hepworth DBE, Three Forms (from Opposing Forms), 1970, screenprint, 77.5 x 58 cm, kindly on loan from The Hepworth Wakefield Art Collection.
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Barbara Hepworth, Rangatira II, 1970, screenprint, 77.5 x 58.3 cm, kindly on loan from The Hepworth Wakefield Art Collection.
Barbara Hepworth DBE, Sun Setting, 1971, lithograph, 75.6 x 54.5 cm, kindly on loan from The Hepworth Wakefield Art Collection.
Not illustrated in this catalogue
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Barbara Hepworth DBE, Mycenae, 1969, lithograph, 81 x 58.4 cm, kindly on loan from Osborne Samuel, London.
Beryl Cook OBE, Strippergram, 1990, screenprint, 49.5 x 57 cm, kindly on loan from CCA Galleries, Surrey.
Beryl Cook OBE, Gard du Nord, 1990, screenprint, 71 x 43.3 cm, kindly on loan from CCA Galleries, Surrey.
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Bridget Riley CH CBE, Frieze, 2000, screenprint, 30.5 x 57 cm, kindly on loan from Adam Gallery, London.
Bridget Riley CH CBE, Composition with Circles (no. 5), 2005, screenprint, 63.9 x 75.7 cm, kindly on loan from Clive Botting Fine Art, Hythe.
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Bridget Riley CH CBE, Two Blues, 2003, screenprint, 54.5 x 53.5 cm, kindly on loan from Clive Botting Fine Art, Hythe.
Charlotte Cornish, A Good Day I, 2011, two-plate colour etching with additional screenprinted mark, 42 x 38 cm, kindly on loan from the artist.
Charlotte Cornish, Falling II, 2005, screenprint, 76 x 54 cm (paper size), kindly on loan from CCA Galleries, Surrey.
Charlotte Cornish, A Good Day II, 2011, two-plate colour etching with additional screenprinted mark, 42 x 38 cm, kindly on loan from the artist.
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Female artists and the medium of print
Saturday 17 May 10:30 – 12:00 Gill Saunders, Senior Curator (Prints), Victoria & Albert Museum Making a difference? Women artists as printmakers
Thursday 22 May 18:00 – 20:00 Paul Coldwell, artist and Professor in Fine Art at the University of the Arts London Image copyright Paul Laidler
Paula Rego as printmaker
Saturday 24 May 14:00 – 16:00 Dawn Cole, contemporary artist and UKC alumna The different techniques of printmaking
Saturday 31 May 14:00 – 16:00 William Pryor, grandson of twentieth-century printmaker Gwen Raverat Raverat’s history, wood engravings and artistic circle
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FREE LECTURES by leading experts
Saturday 7 June 14:00 – 16:00 Liliane Lijn, American-born artist concerned with light and movement Biting through: the relationship between her etchings, lithographs and screenprints and sculpture
Thursday 12 June 18:00 – 20:00 Fiona de Bulat, artist, lecturer and cofounder of ‘DBA editions’ print studio Black, white and one: developing a print portfolio from artwork to gallery
Saturday 14 June 14:00 – 16:00 Anita Klein, Australian born contemporary painter and printmaker and fellow and past president of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers Session 1: Beauty in art Session 2: Print techniques in Klein’s work
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Charlotte Hodes, Bathers Dusk, 2008, laser cut print, 145 x 100 cm, kindly on loan from Dr Paul Laider, University of West England.
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Charlotte Hodes, Bathers Pink Drapery, 2008, laser cut print, 145 x 100 cm, kindly on loan from Dr Paul Laider, University of West England.
Cornelia Parker OBE RA, Spitting Sugar (Long Shot), 2003, etching, 36 x 36 cm, kindly on loan from Julian Page, London.
Dorothea Tanning, La-Maree 5, 1970, etching and aquatint, 28.5 x 16.5 cm, kindly on loan from Idbury Prints, Cotswolds.
Not illustrated in this catalogue Dorothea Tanning, Untitled (en chair ou en or), 1975, lithograph, 31.5 x 24.5 cm, kindly on loan from Idbury Prints, Cotswolds.
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The art of deception
S
ince graduating in 2005 my work has focused around printmaking. My approach to printmaking I see as an exploration of the very nature of print: repetition, reversal, layering, transparency, opacity, texture, impression, process, presentation and display. Every idea, technique, material and means of display is carefully researched to ensure that each has a significance and relevance to the completed works. Although I often work in isolation in my studio, I also strongly believe in the need to pass on knowledge and expertise. For this reason, I run workshops from my own studio and in 2009 set up a not-for-profit organisation, Pushing Print, which organises an annual print festival in Margate, aimed at promoting and raising awareness of contemporary print practice. Since 2008, my work has been inspired by a diary that was written by my Great Aunt, Clarice Spratling in 1915/16. Clarice was, at the time of writing the diary, stationed in France and serving as a WW1 Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse. As I read the diary, I was reminded of some images I had seen years earlier in an old suitcase of photos that I had rescued when my mother was clearing out the attic. She had put the suitcase to one side to be taken to the tip. There amongst the
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many old photos, I found images that were taken at the time of the diary; of nurses and patients in hospital wards and army hospital camps, and images of hospital staff having afternoon tea. Along with these photographs was a notebook, dated 1908 and used by Clarice to write down recipes, crochet and knitted lace patterns and old remedies for ailments. I was intrigued by the photographs, they depicted scenes of order and calm and of relaxed people taking tea, but the words in Clarice’s diary were at odds with these images and described some of the horror of life in a war time hospital. For example, Sept 30th 1915: ‘Wounded continually coming in. When were full sometimes passages were crowded’, Jan 2nd 1916: ‘Men had eyes removed’. I recognised that this contrast represented the propaganda and the campaign to keep the Home Front happy, and became intrigued by the deception evident within this small suitcase. The first body of work to come from the archive, entitled Reading Between the Lines took its inspiration from the diary, photographs and notebook. I commissioned a knitter to make up several of Clarice’s lace patterns, which I then used as collagraph plates. These resulted in a series of prints entitled Thought Patterns and provided me with valuable research in to how lace appears in two dimensions. Further research into lace led to the discovery that the origins of the word ‘lace’ are in the Latin word laqueus (noose), which is related to the word lacere (to lure or deceive). This fact underpinned my initial ideas and confirmed that lace was the relevant motif with which to represent deception. Following on from the collagraph prints, I began to experiment with text from the diary, repeating, reversing and overlaying, to see if I could use it to create patterns that would resemble lace. The resulting lace designs were made on the computer but digital prints of these proved to be very flat and graphic in appearance. I needed to find a suitable printing technique that would have a relevance to the work and ideas. Solar plate etching, a fairly new and environmentally friendly technique, offered the solution. This photographic printing technique requires the light sensitive plate to be exposed to UV light. I used sunlight, using my designs printed onto acetate. The plate is then developed in water and can be inked and
printed through a press like a traditional etching and using white ink on black paper. I see the solar plate technique as leaving a trace, a memory on the plate and the resulting prints have a textured quality that many have thought to be real lace. The final appearance and presentation of this series of prints were greatly influenced by research carried out at the V&A and the way the lace is exhibited in their collection, i.e. white lace, pinned to a dark background, presented in individual frames and directly refer the work back to museum collections and archives. Dawn Cole Artist and University of Kent Alumna More information: www.dawncole.co.uk
Dawn Cole, Amputations Etc, 2011, solar plate etching, 77.5 x 56.5 cm, kindly on loan from the artist.
Dawn Cole, Men Had Eyes Removed, 2009, solar plate etching, 76.6 x 56 cm, kindly on loan from the artist.
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Eileen Cooper RA, The Moon, The Bird and The Bride, 1992, linocut, 58 x 76 cm, kindly on loan from Stoneman Gallery, Cornwall.
Eileen Cooper RA, Dawn Chorus, 1990, linocut, 70 x 85 cm, kindly on loan from Stoneman Gallery, Cornwall.
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Eileen Lawrence, Prayer Stick I, 1977, etching, 16.5 x 178 cm, kindly on loan from the University of Warwick Art Collection.
Elizabeth Magill, Thornbird, 2006, lithograph, 60 x 83.5 cm, kindly on loan from Osborne Samuel, London.
Ethel Spowers, Wet Afternoon, 1929, linocut, 23.8 x 20.3 cm, kindly on loan from Osborne Samuel, London.
Elisabeth Frink CH DBE RA, The Prioress’s Tale, 1972, etching, 87.3 x 67 cm, kindly on loan from The Beaney, Canterbury.
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Gillian Carnegie, Coney (from Ponoka portfolio), 2004, etching, 22.4 x 32.4 cm, kindly on loan from the University of Warwick Art Collection.
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Gillian Carnegie, Black Square (from Ponoka portfolio), 2004, etching, 29.5 x 29.3 cm, kindly on loan from the University of Warwick Art Collection.
Gwen Raverat, Baigneuses, 1920, wood engraving, 15.1 x 15.1 cm, kindly on loan from The Raverat Archive.
Gwen Raverat, Sleepers, 1927, wood engraving, 12.1 x 17.7 cm, kindly on loan from The Raverat Archive.
Gwen Raverat, The River Darent, 1931, wood engraving, 25 x 17 cm, kindly on loan from Idbury Prints, Cotswolds.
Gwen Raverat, The River Ver, 1931, wood engraving, 25 x 17 cm, kindly on loan from Idbury Prints, Cotswolds.
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Gwen Raverat, The Bolshevik Agent, 1920, wood engraving (block 2), 15.4 x 15.6 cm, kindly on loan from The Raverat Archive.
Gwen Raverat, Olive Pickers, 1923, wood engraving (hand coloured), 15.5 x 9.8 cm, kindly on loan from The Raverat Archive. Not illustrated in this catalogue Gwen Raverat, Tapestry Song, 1934, wood engraving (hand coloured), 15.1 x 11.4 cm, kindly on loan from The Raverat Archive.
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Gwen Raverat, The Princess and the Swans, 1939, wood engraving, 12.8 x 11.5 cm, kindly on loan from The Raverat Archive.
Joan Mitchell, Untitled (Fresh Air School), 1972, lithograph, 38 x 55 cm, kindly on loan from Idbury Prints, Cotswolds.
Leonora Carrington OBE, Snake, linocut on rice paper, 18 x 11.5 cm, kindly on loan from Viktor Wynd Gallery, London.
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H e x ag r a m 2 1 S h i h H o - Bi t i n g T h r o u g h
A
s in my all my practise, I use printing to explore. I have always found that working in new media leads to new ideas. I use the word ‘new’ to signify a process or material I have not used before. Every media, technique or material has a life or characteristic of its own and cannot simply be used to reproduce what one was doing in another fashion. Industrial Landscapes, the first prints I made were silkscreened at Advanced Graphics in 1971. I had taken photographs of a number of cooling towers emerging from the dark Victorian brick high streets of Acton and Neasden. I came upon them quite suddenly, while driving to a chromeplating factory and, in such an incongruous setting, they appeared to me like waisted female forms. Industrial sites fascinate me; the purely functional structures look like architectural fantasies run wild. Bernard Jacobsen agreed to edition the prints I wanted to make from these photographs and I took the opportunity to experiment as much as possible with the silkscreen media. At the time, Claus Oldenberg was producing his gigantic Knees for the Thames prints at Advanced Graphics and we both noticed the odd resemblance between them and my cooling towers. I made five silkscreen prints and wanted to try different techniques for each of them. Chris
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Battamba and Bob Saitch initiated me into the innumerable ways in which silk screen could be used. At the same time, I had been making cut out collages of dancing conical figures and these were brilliantly translated into the Koancut prints, using silk-screen printed cut outs that I could position and glue to the backing card. This edition was also made in 1971 for Leslie Waddington. In 1972, I spent part of a summer in Stephen Spender’s house in Mausanne, near the Alpilles in France. As my partner and I drove near these gentle foothills, their curved outlines would undulate like waves. I started to think about how I could make a work that would approach their velvet mobility and apparently infinite changes. I decided that I wanted to make a set of interactive, changeable prints that would be visible in two windows. Working with my assistant, Nick Williams, and an industrial designer and master printer, Kevin Harris, I produced a permutable print set, entitled Landlines, composed of eight separate shaped pieces, each printed on both sides of the card. One side was a blend of tones of a particular colour, whereas the reverse side was a grey of the same hue as the colour. I designed a folding book that becomes both background and frame for two changeable images made from the eight separate cut out forms. The idea was that one could change the image by rearranging the eight printed shapes and the changes were to the order of sixteen factorial. Of course, not all of them were pleasing but, nevertheless, it meant that you could live with a continuously renewable work of art, a work that allowed the owner to participate in its continual creation. I was particularly intrigued by the half-tone process and thought it fitting to use, when making a print of a small newspaper clipping of India’s nuclear power station in Trombay. I called the print Quantum One. Kevin Harris used thirteen separate printings to achieve the effect of light in it and to convey the sense of the splitting of the atom. Quantum One won the Alecto Award at the Bradford Print Biennale, which then gave me the opportunity to work at the Alecto Print Studio with Charlie Newington. Joe Studholme, director of Alecto, enthused over my silkscreen and hoped I would continue in that medium but I had been working on drawings
I called Flow Lines and wanted to bring these into print. Flow Lines involved making repetitive small marks that, in close relation to each other, spontaneously created organic patterns. Joe suggested I try etching, using the sugar lift technique to paint the marks on the copper plate, in much the same way as I had done on paper. However, painting these marks on copper meant the printed images were reversed. In the final printing, I double printed in two colours to introduce light and shadow and a sense of motion. The Flow Line etchings relate to Threes and Lines, a series of sculptures I was making at that time, exploring how form is seen through the reflection of light off moving surfaces. In 1980, I was commissioned by the Milton Keynes Development Corporation to design a sculpture for the Midsummer Arcade of the city centre, a huge shopping mall. Circle of Light is made from twenty-three aluminium tubes, which have had their surfaces altered and then wound with enamelled copper wire. The tubes hang from a concealed beam beneath the false ceiling of the Midsummer Arcade, forming a curved circular plane, which reflects light. Each tube rotates separately around its own axis, creating a three-dimensional surface in constant motion. Thinking that the surface alterations on the tubes were interesting in themselves, I made rubbings of each tube. I then used some of these rubbings to make some lithographic plates, working at the Birgit Skiold Print Workshop. These would have been monoprints but were not finally printed, because I felt they did not work when cut down in size, the smallest original rubbing being approximately three metres in length. In 1990, I was asked to make a print for the Mead Gallery Art Collection. The plan was that the edition would be sold to pay for the restoration of the 20’ high kinetic light sculpture, White Koan that the University of Warwick had purchased in 1972. I decided to create an image related to the sculpture and began working with Charlie Newington on a large etching. I was in a sombre mood and Charlie encouraged me to attack the plate in a free, almost expressionist manner. The White Koan is a minimal meditative work, however, Black Koan, the etching was more like its shadow, an ominous and brooding image.
More recently, I completed a set of five digital prints produced by Dark Matter Studio. Based on my work with text since 1974, each print is a record of the winning and losing words from five performances of Power Game. Power Game is an exploration of the meaning of power and of the prejudices and preconceptions that people attach to words. It has been staged several times, since its first performance in 1974, when underground filmmaker Derek Jarman and Middle East commentator Patrick Seale took part in it. For the digital prints, I had records, written and on video, of the sequences of winning and losing words from five performances. The colours used were faithful to the colour of the actual word cards, which I had invented, although only the winning cards are in colour, the losing cards are printed in grey, recalling the greying out on a computer screen of disabled icons.
Liliane Lijn Artist More information: www.lilianelijn.com
Liliane Lijn, Black Koan, 1990, etching, 101 x 77 cm, Kent Print Collection.
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Lill Tschudi, Gymnastic Exercises, 1931, linocut, 20 x 16.5 cm, kindly on loan from Osborne Samuel, London.
Lucy Farley, To the Lighthouse, Ile de Re, 2015, screenprint, 80 x 107 cm, kindly on loan from CCA Galleries, Surrey.
Not illustrated in this catalogue
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Lill Tschudi, Underground, 1930, linocut, 16.5 x 15 cm, kindly on loan from Osborne Samuel, London.
Louise Bourgeois, The Happy House, 2003, drypoint, 15 x 17 inches, kindly on loan from Marlborough Fine Art, London.
R e f l e c t i o n s o n wo r k i n g w i t h Pau l a R e g o
I
n 1985 along with my wife, the artist Charlotte Hodes, I established a small etching press in our house in Hackney, London, essentially for our own work and projects. In 1986, following a casual comment to Paula Rego, who had taught Charlotte at the Slade and whose work we both admired, Paula became a regular visitor to the house to make her etchings. Beginning with the series Girl & Dogs in 1987 and moving on through the Nursery Rhymes, and including Peter Pan, Pendle Witches and The Children’s Crusade, over a period of twenty years I worked closely with her, predominantly at weekends in the house, helping her develop this body of work. My approach to printmaking has always been to keep things simple and allow nothing to get in the way of the ideas and emotion. This direct approach suited Paula and we developed a very close and intense friendship, as well as maintaining a professional working relationship. While the conditions in the house were cramped and sometimes makeshift, the studio being an adjunct to the kitchen, the
standards that we both worked towards were set at the highest level. The work with Paula extended me technically, having to develop ways of working and finding solutions to problems as they arose. This was particularly the case with the coloured etchings for Peter Pan. However, above all it was an exciting and invigorating experience, sometimes manic more akin to a pizza parlour than a studio. Working closely with another artist that one admires is a privilege as well as a responsibility, ensuring that her ideas were faithfully translated into the final etchings and that the final prints met with her exacting standards. Through this long association, I was offered insights into her creative process and the manner in which an idea builds from first thoughts, through drawing, to completed image. In my talk I will draw from this experience and hopefully share insights into how these prints evolved and some of the references and influences. I have written and lectured on Paula’s graphic work on numerous occasions including at the Tate, and contributed an essay on her process in T.G. Rothenstall’s Paula Rego: The complete Graphic work, published by Thames & Hudson. In 2005, I wrote the catalogue essay to accompany the survey exhibition of her prints at the Talbot Rice Museum, Edinburgh.
Paul Coldwell Artist and Professor in Fine Art at the University of the Arts London
Image copyright Paul Laidler
More information: www.paulcoldwell.org
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Paula Rego DBE, Hook and Peter, 1992, etching and aquatint, 27.5 x 20 cm, kindly on loan from Marlborough Fine Art, London.
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Paula Rego DBE, Grand Old Duke of York, 1990, etching and aquatint, 90 x 52 cm, kindly on loan from Marlborough Fine Art, London.
Sandra Blow RA, Canvas on Chrome, 2003, silkscreen collage, 71 x 71 cm, kindly on loan from Clive Botting Fine Art, Hythe.
Sandra Blow RA, Colour Within, 2005, screenprint, 71 x 71 cm, kindly on loan from Clive Botting Fine Art, Hythe.
Not illustrated in this catalogue Prunella Clough, Setting I, 1998, etching, 26.9 x 32 cm, kindly on loan from Osborne Samuel, London.
Sandra Blow RA, Orange Field, 2000, screenprint, 72.5 x 72.5 cm, kindly on loan from Clive Botting Fine Art, Hythe.
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Rose Hilton, Rose after Ingres, 2002, lithograph, 38 x 28 cm, kindly on loan from Hilton Fine Art, Bath.
Sarah Lucas, Squab Squaw, 2011, digital print, 152.4 x 101.6 cm, kindly on loan from Paul Stolper, London.
Sarah Hardacre, Arms Open to Welcome the Sun, 2012, screenprint, 70 x 70 cm, kindly on loan from Paul Stolper, London.
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Sarah Hardacre, Salford Sizzle, 2012, screenprint, 70 x 100 cm, kindly on loan from Paul Stolper, London.
Sonia Delaunay, Untitled, 1969, etching in colours, 54.5 x 42 cm, kindly on loan from Adam Gallery, London.
Sonia Delaunay, Affreux Jojo, 1969, lithograph, 76.5 x 56.5 cm, kindly on loan from Adam Gallery, London.
Susie Hamilton, Slow Rotation, 2013, monoprint, 77 x 60 cm, kindly on loan from Paul Stolper, London.
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Thérèse Oulton, Untitled 6, 1992, etching and aquatint, 46 x 52 cm, kindly on loan from the University of Warwick Art Collection.
Thérèse Oulton, Untitled 7, 1992, etching and aquatint, 46 x 51 cm, kindly on loan from the University of Warwick Art Collection.
Not illustrated in this catalogue Tess Jaray RA, The Serpent and the Cross I, 1993, etching, 57 x 43 cm, kindly on loan from Stoneman Gallery, Cornwall.
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Tess Jaray RA, The Serpent and the Cross II, 1993, etching, 57 x 43 cm, kindly on loan from Stoneman Gallery, Cornwall.
S e l e c t e d Bi b l i o g r a p h y
Underexposed select bibliography
Websites:
Barker, E., Contemporary Cultures of Display, Yale University Press, London, 1999.
www.alysonhunter.com
Brodsky, J. K., 'Some Notes on Women Printmakers' in Art Journal, Vol. 35, No. 4, Summer 1976.
www.annedesmet.com www.anitaklein.com
Coldwell, P., Printmaking: A Contemporary Perspective, Black Dog Publishing, London, 2010.
www.berylcook.org
Foster, A., Tate Women Artists, Tate Publishing, London, 2004.
www.charlottehodes.com
Freeland, C., Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2001.
www.dawncole.co.uk
Glaister, D., A woman’s place in the gallery, The Guardian, 18 June 1997.
www.eileencooper.co.uk
www.charlottecornish.co.uk
www.dorotheatanning.org
Gascoigne, B., How to Identify Prints: A complete guide to manual and mechanical processes from woodcut to ink-jet, (2nd Edition) Thames and Hudson, London, 1986.
www.elisabethfrink-estate.com
Griffiths, A., Prints and Printmaking: An Introduction to the History and Techniques, British Museum Press, second edition, 1996.
www.hepworthwakefield.org
Lack, J., Where are the Girls? Jemima Kirke on women in art – video, The Guardian online, 23 January 2014.
www.lilianelijn.com
Saunders, G. and Miles, R., Prints Now: Directions and Definitions, V&A Museum, London, 2006.
www.raverat.com
Serota. N., Experience or Interpretation: The Dilemma of Museums of Modern Art, Thames and Hudson, London, 2000.
www.elizabethmagill.com www.joanmitchellfoundation.org www.lucyfarley.com www.sandrablow.com www.susiehamilton.co.uk www.tessjaray.com
Valerie Thornton, Vezelay, 1965, etching, 50.5 x 63.3 cm, kindly on loan from the University of Warwick Art Collection.
www.thereseoulton.com www.traceyeminstudio.com www.marycassatt.org www.nmwa.org www.tatemodern.org www.vam.ac.uk
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A fi n a l wo r d o n m a k i n g t h i s e x h i b i t i o n p o s s i b l e . . .
T
he seeds for this exhibition were sown back in January 2013 when both Lynne and I were studying the Print Collecting and Curating undergraduate module. On inspecting the Kent Print Collection at that time, we worked together to devise and produce a bid that successfully made it through to the Hustings in February of that same year. Whilst our bid lost out by just one vote, we were determined to find a way of realising our vision and were resolute to do this. Therefore, we approached our lecturer, Dr Ben Thomas, and asked if we might be able to fit our exhibition into the Studio 3 exhibition schedule – which luckily he agreed we could. We were allocated a modest budget to support us in achieving this goal. We were then able to match these funds through grants and generous donations. From that moment on, we have worked flat out to ensure that our aim has been achieved. We met during the summer of 2013 and drew up a meticulously detailed action plan and started to approach major galleries such as the V&A, Mead Gallery and Hepworth Wakefield for their support and guidance. Unlike the print exhibition we worked on before, where we were part of a larger team and worked on the curating sub team, this time we have covered all areas together from operations, curating, marketing, educational outreach, fundraising and managing a budget. From mistakes we learned previously, we have collaborated tirelessly on this project drawing from each other’s strengths and prior knowledge: Lynne’s marketing background and my educational experience. This has been an enjoyable yet challenging experience where we have learned so much from both the highs and the lows. As students, we both feel very fortunate to have been given this unique opportunity to realise our dream as part of our studies at the University of Kent. We hope that you find the exhibition an interesting and pleasurable experience, where you come away realising the diversity of print methods and with some further understanding about the vast number of female artists who work with the medium of print. As a direct result of this show, the Kent Print Collection now has a growing collection of works by female artists and we hope it will continue to expand.
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The cost of printing these catalogues has kindly been met through the generous sponsorship from Creative Campus. For further information about Creative Campus, please visit our website: www.kent.ac.uk/creativecampus/ Alternatively, if you would like to join our mailing list or to submit an idea, please e-mail: creative-campus@kent.ac.uk with a brief outline of your project.
Frances Chiverton, Co-curator, Underexposed
A b o u t S t u d i o 3 Ga l l e ry
Ha p p y to p r ov i d e a d iff e r e n t t y p e o f p r i n t…
Studio 3 Gallery is a dedicated exhibition venue within the University’s award-winning School of Arts Jarman Building. Since its opening, Studio 3 Gallery has developed an innovative programme of exhibitions that combines art historical scholarship and cutting-edge contemporary art. For more information, please visit: http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/ studio3gallery.
CKN Print of Northampton is delighted to be able to support the Underexposed exhibition. A catalogue devoted to a show of fine art prints deserves fine printing – and we’re well placed to provide that, time and time again. • Brochures • Leaflets • Posters • Folders with inserts
"It is with tremendous pride that Studio 3 Gallery again hosts student work of a professional standard. My congratulations to Frances Chiverton and Lynne Dickens on curating this ground-breaking exhibition, and my sincere thanks to all those who have helped them to achieve this."
• Die-cut packaging • Encapsulating For more information, please call Gary Blunt on 07764 220978 or email gary.blunt@cknprint.co.uk.
Dr Ben Thomas, Curator of Studio 3 Gallery and Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Art
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Gill Saunders, Senior Curator (Prints), Victoria & Albert Museum "Many of the terms which have traditionally been associated with prints – small-scale, modest, private, intimate, personal – have been applied to the work of women artists too. This exhibition sets out to challenge the often dismissive and derogatory implications of such terms by bringing together a diverse mix of works which demonstrate the originality, innovation, skill and ambition to be found in the printed work of female painters, sculptors and printmakers from the Nineteenth Century to the present day."
Studio 3 Gallery | School of Arts | Jarman Building | University of Kent | Canterbury CT2 7UG
ISBN 978-1-902671-88-8
Published May 2014, designed by Barry Silverman, printed by CKN Print
9 781902 671888