Watershead

“Watershed” is a selected exhibition of contemporary Printmaking, involving an exchange between Hong Kong and Belfast. These three pieces were exhibited in a section of the Hong Kong Print Festival and in return at the Millennium Court Portadown. The Festival was founded in 2000 and in 2010 included over 300 prints by 195 international artists. “Arrive” was illustrated and reviewed in Printmaking Today vol 20.no1 Spring 2011. This series of 3 images examine the classical techniques of representation and ways of drawing, spanning Durer to Lichtenstein. Comparative analysis of the history of these graphic forms, particularly linear construction through engraving and etching, led to this new body of work. The work is a linear digital rendering applied to a rigorous methodology for an analogue development of abstracted form and space described by two-dimensions of mark. The series investigates how space is described, negotiated and understood on a flat plane. Using digitally produced acetates/liths, striped in horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines, the liths are layered and adjusted for the desired structure and tone. The technique involves the use of the liths as screen prints, layered on top of each other, to create a complex grid system. The form is defined by inserting stencils at various stages of the printing process.The “impression” of the liths is more than a convenience; it creates a symbiotic quality between material and form that’s appropriate to the genre and subject. The effect of borrowing the “appearance” of classic draftsmanship is to reproduce, through a mimicking technique, an appropriate aesthetic for the abstract and post-modern nature of this work.These pieces are consciously informed by the work of Warhol, Lichtenstein and Caulfield who made a common use of half tones and minimal cross-hatching, in their reworking of classical techniques, in Post-modern “Pop” and “Pulp-fiction irony.