The main body of work for the residency has begun. Over the past two weeks I have prepared and developed some of the prints for a large installation of prints. The process is very fluid as I cut out aspects of the found images, scan some of them to screen print, stick some to paper ready for printing, and then in the print room the individual pieces are still not resolved. I still have to make those final decisions and modify the prepared images further to make the narrative work, and then again the narrative also shifts and changes. When I say narrative, you guessed it, it is not a fixed narrative, or ‘story’, in that sense. It is really and series of discursive steps and diversions using ‘the copy’ to keep shifting the referents in the original images. By original I mean the source images which are only ever partial and cannot be considered as conclusive images in themselves. They may intimate associations and the original form and context from which they came, but as the repetition increases the process of deferment increases. I am working on another batch to follow and those will also work into some of the first batch of prints.
Well as an explanation, I think that was definitely discursive enough. I will get back to theory at a later point, and leave it there for now. All will become apparent in completion.
This week was good as Dale Devereux Barker was in the print room with some level 4 students teaching them printmaking as part of their year one introduction modules for the degree course. So it was a busy room, and I got some interest with some students making enquiries about my work and ideas. There was some interesting and well made work created by the students.
