Having proposed this project some time ago, I was equally delighted and terrified to discover I had been awarded funding- so I now have to carry it out!
(Many thanks to ACE!)
Off-Press/Printing Restraint has come about from two distinct research areas-
1) An interest in pushing craft processes out of their comfort zone formally and performatively; creating something akin to “Performance-Craft” whereby the very real possibility of failure would be as much a part of the project as anything else, and the process would be documented as “the work”.
2) As the completion of a long period of research into the term ‘Wild’, that started way back in 2012 by looking at depictions of chimera, cyclops, dog-headed men etc. in early wood cuts and engravings. I saw these early images as an attempt to project ideas of wildness onto untravelled parts of the map. I then wondered what the contemporary equivalent of this process my look like. This led me to create the Wild Project (www.thewildproject.eu) with 14 other EU artists, makers and performers, then go on to a residency in Ullapool working with local basket weavers, and creating performances in the remotest part of Mainland Britain- NH02020 77000.
