Letterpress Commissions

I have just finished my first major commission for a letterpress printing job. I can't say what the commission was or who it was for just yet - but i will post photo's soon. It always involves so much more than ink up and print. I like to keep the clients happy and informed - i like them to be part of the design stage as much as possible - showing samples of various options - fonts, papers, inks etc. these days everyone wants debossing,  but the real skill lies in 'kissing'.  Not to mention that the humidity and strange weather we have been experiencing plays havoc with inks.

If you're familiar with my work you will know i use letterpress extensively - but there is a shift in headspace that has to occur when someone else is commissioning you.

Needless to say, a day up in the wilds with the press, and no internet or mobile signal to distract was just the recipe. A dozen or so exquisite prints rolled off the press - once everything was set up. Now that really was a little more complicated than I first though. It definitely required a bit of tangential if not curvey thinking to solve. But I got there in the end. Hurrah.

If you want to commission letterpress then get in touch.

The Art House Exhibition

So Wednesday the 28th was the opening of my exhibition. It is tentatively called Everytime I'm in a queue I always imagine what I'm going to say about a hundred times'. This exhibition is part retrospective part new work - site specific or made especialy for the show, The title is taken from a new work regarding my new fictional newspaper which I am working on for my Engage Everyone residency at Dundee Contemporary Arts. This time it is more of an intervention.


As part of the opening - and I must admit it was unlike any I had been too - not the traditional private view. The Art Walk was so people were moving from venue to venue. People also tended to cut through the foyer - which is where many of the works are - and go straight to the studios. At 7 i did the now de rigeur artist talk. This was fine - there were even a few faces in the audience i didn't recognise. One of the questions asked was if i am moving to be producer cleaner- crisper work - referencing my recent foray into vinyl. I am enjoying playing with text and vinyl, but i remain of the view that i will produce work which fits the location, space or word the best. I still like being able to see the marks of the process which contributed to the execution of the work. My two new vinyl pieces are in the lift and main corridor of the art house.





Continuing my theme of communication, dialogue and the view that the more connected we are the more disconnected we become - the whole digital/social media diaspora then I am showing 'Solitary' in a paired down version without any additional text on the nature of lonliness.




There is always that element of how the work is going to breathe on its' own. I think there is a good mix or old and new, things in the gallery space and thos site specific and installational elements. I guess that's my work done on it, I've done all I can. Now I am waiting to hear the feedback, see what people think.

Visual Poetry

Something small and frail http://vimeo.com/18369152

Something simple, a start, the first of hopefully many.

All the things I lost No.s 7- 15

Proto Ouch

This was the first version of Ouch - just found it in the back catalogue.

Once a Catholic

Communcation

In the modern world we have ways of keeping communication to a minimum or controlling it. I feel it has become cheapened or under valued. We don't really communicate anymore really. We text cos it avoids real contact (i know the argument of it's the economics etc of language), we can filter our e-mails to only allow some people through. No one writes letters anymore. We dump by text, we reject through e-mails.....This one is for Volker as promised.

Letterpress, 2010.

The embossing on this paper was difficult to scan - apologies for image

ON THE BRINK

We all get there at various times in our live s for a multitude of reasons. Sometimes we need to go there and only realise why when we are safely back away from it (the brink). Right now I wish there was more space around the days, that might keep me from straying too close.

Putting More Meat on the Bones

I just love this font. It was lying unloved gathering dust. I dusted it down, showed it some love et voila

Guilt

Letterpress. 2009.

What can I say?

The Big Freeze

Out in the woods on Christmas Day - what else would I do?

New Letterpress

You Put the Ouch in Touch 2009

Burn Baby Burn

Burn Baby Burn. 2009. Firebrick, Text, Bracket, Pigment

Embossing

Paper, Embossed Letterpress. 2009

A bit too much embossing

Don't Be So Hard On Yourself

Paper, Embossed Letterpress. 2009

Don't be so hard yourself

Letterpress, acrylic,paper 2009

Ouch, Screenprint, 2009

Are you alright?

Bethlem Gallery, 2009

Liar, Liar (Detail)

Liar, Liar (Detail) 2008

Text on Mirror, Cabinet.

This was made in response to a residency at the Affective Disorders Unit at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle. Exhibited in the Mind the Gap exhibition at the Discovery Museum (Newcastle) and The Bethlem Gallery, London (Feb 2009). 

LIAR

LIAR. 2008

My very first letterpress print. This is a prototype for an installation I was making which went into the Mind the Gap exhibition at the Discovery Museum (Oct '08 - Jan '09).