Press Information
Below is the general information for 2 exhibitions, click here for biographies, here for images and here for press releases
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Close to the Surface: Digital Presence - 3-10 November 2008 Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (ICA)
Personalised Surface: work in progress – 12-21 November 2008, Foyer Space, University of the Arts London, Camberwell College of Arts
The Personalised Surface within Fine Art Digital Printmaking
This project, supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) aims to explore the role of surface within fine art digital print from a variety of perspectives including those of practitioners, critics, publishers and curators. It investigates how it is possible to articulate the unique surface qualities of digital print and explore ways, through engagement with the technology, of creating personalised surfaces, which reflect the artist’s needs rather than accepting industry norms.
Through the project we have used eight artists (including ourselves) as case studies for approaching these issues. Each artist was selected because of their particular take on the question of surface and have each adopted very different positions and strategies as evidenced in this exhibition. The project is due to be completed in May 09 and many of these works are still in progress. We hope that through this research, the question of surface and the way in which individual artists address it will stimulate further invention.
Tim Head’s work considers The prescribed role of the commercial inkjet printer as redefined through a computer program that is written to directly control all the printer’s operations, diverting it from a reproduction machine into a direct primary printing medium in its own right. (T.Head)
Christian Nold, in his piece It does not permit itself to be read presents a high &
low tech visualisation that takes a text document from the first information explosion of the Victorian era and re-visualises it using custom software in the contemporary vernacular of the internet text cloud.
In Paul Coldwell’s, Framing Nature Trees the image has been developed on screen in layers, proofed to scale and then remade as a four colour screen-print to accentuate the physical layers of the printed surface as apposed to the virtual layering on screen.
Kathy Prendergast develops her sculptural interest in mapping in this reworking of a commercial contour map of Mt Fuji. Through an intense engagement with drawing, this surface becomes personalises and charged with emotional tension.
In contrast, Bruce Gernand, also a sculptor, exploits the new possibilities through the digital within the process of casting, with digital modelling, the surface is something different, it defines the volume mathematically through facets, meshes and splines. But this surface isn’t a skin, it is permeable….( B.Gernand)
The animated surface on the monitor screen or projection is also explored;
The pixel becomes the equivalent of the artists brush mark in Dan Hays’s lenticular inkjet prints. Hovering between the printed image and the animation, these subtle images of landscape continue the artist’s exploration of images mediated through technology.
Sissu Tarka takes the monitor as the digital surface in her animation mmicrocosms in which she visualises a disruption similar to the malfunction of a TV or video screen.
While Barbara Rauch’s Virtual Heads uses the model of the screensaver as the surface on which to project her images derived from 3D scanning to form a continually changing meditative image.
The project will conclude with a conference at the V&A on 3rd April 2009 and a publication of the research material.
Professor Paul Coldwell
Dr Barbara Rauch
Jonathan Kearney
