Print Project Space
The Print Project Space presents an ongoing series of displays and exhibitions of prints, editions and works on paper by the gallery’s roster of artists. This exhibition series aims to showcase the versatility of printmaking. The creation of new editions and multiples allows artists to approach their practice in alternative ways while also ensuring greater distribution of original works of art at affordable prices.
New editions, entitled Dance., 2023, by Julian Opie depict dancing figures captured in fast movement, using lenticular technology. For these new works Opie, an artist of contemporary life who continually introduces new innovations and technology into his art, explores social media platforms. Each performer moves to a high-energy dance popular on TikTok and YouTube.
Ian Davenport presents his monumental screenprint Centre, 2022. Davenport’s approach is informed by experimentation and this print explores the dynamic sequences of colour that have been applied vertically. Fluid lines of colour pool to form puddles at the bottom of the composition.
"These works have a very digitalised, sort of pulsing rhythm that goes through them yet they are still about colour and line. I'm really interested in that idea of beats and pulses and how you put it together."
Jim Dine created the woodcut, The Jungle (Number One) in 2022, in the lead up to his solo show A History of Gardening, which took place in November 2022. The Jungle (Number One) is one of three unique hand-painted monoprints which represent Dine’s perception of plants as living and breathing models.
Two prints by Rhys Coren will be exhibited, Degorgeous 2022 and Dewith, Degrovvy, Define 2022. Coren’s compositions explore rhythm, colour and texture and are often influenced by a variety of musical genres, including electronic music, jazz and disco.
“I wrote out some of the lyrics from the song 'What is Love' (1990) from Deee-Lite's World Clique album, then started to trace over them, then trace the trace, then trace the trace of the trace and so on. I repeated this for weeks, building a muscle memory for each part of each letter of each word. Allowing the words to morph and take on new characteristics, but gradually enough that the images still retained the essence of the meaning of each word; Degorgeous, Dewithit, Degroovy, Define, Delectable.”
Michael Craig-Martin’s recent print series Past Present, pays homage to famous paintings of the past. We will present Craig-Martin’s version of Hans Holbein the Younger’s 1533 masterpiece The Ambassadors and of Las Meninas, 1656 by Diego Velásquez.
“Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors is an extraordinary painting for many reasons. A striking double portrait, it also depicts two shelves of meticulously detailed objects of science and the arts. These include a terrestrial globe, a celestial globe, a quadrant, a polyhedral sundial, various books and rolled documents, and a lute. My passionate interest in this painting is not difficult to understand.”
Richard Serra is an artist well known for his monumental sculptures which explore concepts of weight, balance and gravity. A key part of the sculptor’s practice is printmaking, his etching Level I 2008 will be included in this show.
A stencil edition by David Nash is also featured. All of his prints are produced by hand in small editions and are based on the artist’s observations of nature, particularly focused on the rural landscape around his home and studio in North Wales.
Christiane Baumgartner’s recent printmaking practice has been concerned with the movement and the play of light across horizons of land and sea. For this display the artist will present recent woodcuts including works which have not been exhibited in the UK before.
“I often sit and watch the sunset. A sunset lasts just for a short time. I remember my father saying that when the sun hits the horizon, there’s just four minutes until it vanishes. Every sunset is different, they’re never the same, and every day the sun sets at a different time and also in a different place in the sky depending on the time of year.”
Further works on display include a highly painterly screenprint by Clare Woods. Between Before and After, 2022, exemplifies the artist’s interest in still-life, exploring themes of fragility and transience.
Ali Banisadr presents two recent prints: Nocturne, 2019, and Cannons Hidden in Roses, 2019. Music is an important element of Banisadr's work and these prints directly relate to the music of nineteenth-century composer Frédéric Chopin; Chopin wrote a series of piano pieces entitled Nocturnes and his fellow composer Robert Schumann described Chopin's work as "cannons hidden in roses."
"Printmaking has added another layer of understanding to my paintings. It has also helped me try to understand how some of my favourite printmakers, such as Goya, Martin Schongauer, Breugel and Hiroshige, made their prints."
Rana Begum, well-known for her use of fluorescent colours and geometric patterns, will present a new mesh sculpture. By drawing aspects of her editions into three-dimensional space, the artist continues to explore the effects of colour, light and movement.
“You can walk past the work. It’s not shouting ‘look at me, look at me’, but sometimes it’s just about pausing and noticing how certain elements — light, form and colour — come together.”
