I had a lot of help from a number of collaborators to realise the work in the current exhibition, which was made possible by the Arts Council funding that I received. It means I can pay other artists and professionals to help me out, something that I value greatly. I’m going to post a number of profiles about those collaborators this week as the exhibition draws to a close on Saturday 9th August.So, for the first one:
Karen EdwardsLetterpress collaboration
Whilst I was in Southend on my residency with Metal I came up with the idea to create Monopoly-style ‘chance’ cards to share some of the research that I’d been doing into the forces that cause people to need to move home (or not). The combination of an economic situation (e.g. limited availability of affordable housing) along with an action (miss a turn) seemed to be a way of communicating some of the ideas I’d been looking into. I mocked some up on the computer, but as a digital print they were lacking some of the handmade quality of the original Monopoly cards. I’d used a letterpress machine to print some single letters whilst I was on AA2A at Salford in 2011, and had seen letterpress used in various situations to good effect, so thought it would be a good method to use in this context.
I’d met Karen, who’s based at Bridewell studios, during the planning of Liverpool Art Month a few years back, and had seen her letterpress works at an artist fair recently, so approached her to ask for her advice and assistance. Karen was interested in the project and we met to see how the work could be produced. I brought the digital examples and had sourced some suitably coloured card whilst Karen had done some research into the font that was used by Monopoly.
Karen has a lovely collection of type, and the closest font she had was a sans serif font, but when she tried setting the text that I wanted she found that she didn’t have enough. This is where I would have floundered, but Karen knew that it was possible to get dies cut with each individual phrase on it. This cut down the amount of time that it was going to take for her to set the type and meant that she could press on with pressing the cards. I’ve ended up with 10 different cards in an edition of 20 that Karen printed on her Adana press (which is a magical little press with a rotating ink pad, levers and a lovely mechanical feel). Apart from the content and the overall look of the cards I didn’t have a hand in the actual printing, which still feels a bit odd, but is something I’ve learnt to live with since my ‘Asking for help’ review bursary.
You can have a look at Karen’s work on her website where you’ll see some of her prints, books and pictures of her press.
http://www.karenedwardscreations.com/page4.htm
