peripheral acts II
A selection of prints exploring the combined application of scrim and ink throughout my doctoral project.
Scrim – a starchy open weave fabric, ordinarily used within etching and lithographic printing techniques as a means of buffing away ink or gum arabic from the surface of printing plates and lithography stones. Here, applied as a 'tool' for the transferral of ink from one surface to another (press bed to scrim, scrim to paper, or scrim to scrim), the fabric also becomes a lens for re-navigating practices of print making.
It draws the printmaker into print's awkward materiality, into spaces within the workshop and practice that may go unquestioned and ignored, or avoided. Into the very edges of the printing press, or the unexpected emergence of moiré patterning that disturbs the printed surface and is exploited through repetitive procedural action, or into the ink saturated fibres of the scrim itself, resisting the plucking fingers of the printmaker as it is eased into alignment atop the ink-tacky press. Fingers which, with each gentle rearranging tug, accumulate smears of the chosen ink, gradually becoming more ink than skin as they tangle within the fabric's sticky threads.
Exhibited as part of the 2024 PhD Showcase at Edinburgh College of Art.
Images 1,2,3,4,6 by Sinéad Kempley.
A selection of prints exploring the combined application of scrim and ink throughout my doctoral project.
Scrim – a starchy open weave fabric, ordinarily used within etching and lithographic printing techniques as a means of buffing away ink or gum arabic from the surface of printing plates and lithography stones. Here, applied as a 'tool' for the transferral of ink from one surface to another (press bed to scrim, scrim to paper, or scrim to scrim), the fabric also becomes a lens for re-navigating practices of print making.
It draws the printmaker into print's awkward materiality, into spaces within the workshop and practice that may go unquestioned and ignored, or avoided. Into the very edges of the printing press, or the unexpected emergence of moiré patterning that disturbs the printed surface and is exploited through repetitive procedural action, or into the ink saturated fibres of the scrim itself, resisting the plucking fingers of the printmaker as it is eased into alignment atop the ink-tacky press. Fingers which, with each gentle rearranging tug, accumulate smears of the chosen ink, gradually becoming more ink than skin as they tangle within the fabric's sticky threads.
Exhibited as part of the 2024 PhD Showcase at Edinburgh College of Art.
Images 1,2,3,4,6 by Sinéad Kempley.
15th-18th October 2024
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