About Hive
I’ve been working on a new series of drawings called Hive. It’s currently unclear exactly how these studies are going to ultimately manifest themselves, but I suspect it’ll be as a series of large format panels, possibly in sequence. For the moment however, I thought I’d print a single, smaller component of the series as a new piece for my Experimental Print Club.
I’ve been thinking about the nature and problem of working in a rapidly climate changing world, and how best to integrate that thinking with my daily studio practice, both as a series of reflections, which is a large part of what the studio is about I think, and as physical works that can create some kind of response to the concepts we’re being asked to consider, and act on.
Hive is of course the idea of a series of interconnected spaces in which a population can form a resilient community in order to thrive, so it’s a lovely structure to work with, both in that sense and in a purely mathematical and geometrical way too.
The idea of ‘duality : singularity’ comes from my current understanding of how I’m both enjoying the trappings of a contemporary urban life, whilst also understanding that we now need to rapidly change our systems to accommodate the scientific realities of the climate crisis. In so doing I feel as though I’m simultaneously living within two systems, a duality, one that is business as usual, and one that is trying to reshape our systems in favour of a new low carbon future.
There’s a lot of interesting maths and science involved in the ideas of duality and singularity too, for those who’d like to explore these ideas further, this wikipedia explainer is a good jumping in point - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_(system_theory)
I’m planning to continue working in this vein, and hope it may lead to some new ways of seeing, and maybe understanding, the essential changes that we are going to need to make over the coming decades. It seems entirely right that artists should have some agency in that thinking, perhaps especially at a personal level.
.
Hive / EPC / duality : singularity
.
Edition of 10
10 colour pigment print on Hahnemühle 305gsm 100% cotton fine art paper.
Cut, debossed and mounted onto Saunders Waterford 300gsm 100% cotton acid free paper, St Cuthberts Mill, Somerset.
.
Sheet size 300mm W x 320mm H
Inked area 180mm W x 195mm H
Hive, in the studio
Print Club blog, January 13th, 2020
“…Sometime towards the end of last year I started working on a new book, broadly designed to catalogue some of my favourite images from the past 12 years. Beautifully printed by Ripe Digital in Corsham, the book features 100 large format pages, with accompanying short texts that I hope illuminate the project succinctly, and with a little humour.
So I thought it would be good to send a copy out to you to kick off the year. If you’d like to view the book before you receive a printed copy, it’s online here
It’s been a fascinating process. I think I started work on it last October, and got sucked into a world of microscopic colour corrections, writing, editing, re writing, and so on. Printed by Ripe Digital, the team there humoured me with four fully bound colour proofs before I was finally happy with the colour balance on each page. We then delved into options for the cover, and ultimately chose a matt finish with silver foil. To some extent I would’ve preferred gloss, but there are a number of technical issues surrounding gloss and foiling! So matt it is, on a superb metallic card, which is more evident on the inside cover where it remains uncoated…”
Text from the Print Club blog, January 13th, 2020
About the Print Club
If you’d like to receive three or four exclusive new editions in the post each year, alongside personal news and views from the studio, and invitations to shows and fairs, please do consider becoming a member of my Experimental Print Club. You can join or leave the club at any time, with absolutely no obligation to stay any longer than you want to.
New works are sent out somewhat sporadically throughout the year, often in line with the changing seasons. Each piece is unique, exclusive, and only available on the day it’s editioned, the size of the edition being determined by the number of members on the day.
I hope the club presents a more personal and intriguing way to connect with the studio, by creating a platform for collecting engaging new works for your home. The club is hosted online here, and I send out fairly regular blog posts and emails about the work too. I’d like to think that it’s an interesting proposition!
Membership is currently priced at £36 per month inc. UK delivery, or £42 for an international address.
Associated works
