Q & A

After a residency in Leipzig Germany, printing for me is forever linked with technology, taking a political stance and visual daring. The area is home to Gutenberg an many old mechanical printmaking machines used for creating newspapers and materials disseminated during the world wars. The ateliers there also continue to work with members of the new Leipzig School.
What continues to intrigue me is the ability for printmaking to make solid the inscrutable in a very precise way - the sense that it can make multiples of works and yet do not simply copy them. The material process in printmaking adds an often-indefinable dimension to the work. It’s not exclusively error but a sense of consideration as the operator is involved making the micro decisions of the work.

I’d like to think that the minute you see an orthogonal speck on a silkscreened work you are alerted to something new happening. It is for this reason that I am intrigued with silkscreening – it has a capacity to evolve and be influenced by new techniques and yet retain an essential “hands on” quality. The multiple micro decisions involved in creating a fine work, the many hesitations, choices involved in altering one’s approach are crucial to achieving the artistic aims of the work.
I also like the apparent simplicity of the process which paradoxically ends up relying so much on the skill. Silkscreening is often associated with the commercial production of multiple images or logos and with dissemination of political ideas on objects from posters to T-shirts. It is very interesting to experiment and use this process to create a single work.

I use digital technology in many ways. I like, for example, to experiment with technology used for one purpose and use it for a completely different purpose. To force it past it’s designed limits, in other words. I’m very interested in pushing technology to the edge of malfunction.

At this point I use printing to make single images – but never say never. I follow the project – if it suits the work, I would work with multiples. The single image gives an opportunity to really dive deep and concentrate on what that work can communicate – to zoom in on a technologically created image, to see it’s details and yet simultaneously, to be able to expand using a hand worked medium in a very large format and to see what emerges.

I like to take a political stance in a broad sense – the work reflects my personal beliefs and goals for the artwork whilst, at least for my work to date, not using specific slogans or images. Having said that, possibly romantically, I’d like to think that printmaking continues to express a spirit of unruliness inherited from its past.

Apart from the other makers in one three collective, I admire a diverse group of artists, from painters Louise Bonnet, Kati Heck and Dana Schutz to Josephine Meckseper and Brent Harris.

Working and discussing ideas formally and informally with others is fantastic – from prosaic problem solving that allows sharing of information to discussions about open possibilities that an approach or a technique. It’s a great way to group together to identify opportunities and approaches.