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.

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News /

From my blog / 12th August 2025

So we’ve arrived at the big day, I’m sending out my Summer 2025 bumper double print edition. As ever, it isn’t what I was expecting to be sending. Although that will come later I’m sure. The Corona piece is still in the works, so I guess that will become the Autumn edition now. The reason for the deviation was my entry for the Royal West of England Academy’s annual Open. I needed to complete my hybrid ReVOX etching, which has been selected for exhibition, alongside one of my Balla editions. So if you visit the RWA Open later in the year, you should see two Print Club editions included in the hang. Having completed the ‘hybrid etching’ I then thought it would make a perfect candidate for the club, and by way of a bonus, I’ve partnered it with a small club only colour edition of Phase TWO.

You’ll be amused to know that the ReVOX etching is not an etching in the traditional sense. The jury decided to select the work, but the notice period from selection to handing in was just three weeks, so I had to make the work and get it framed on the hurry up. As you’ll know, I love the exploration of what is lost and what is gained in the ongoing analogue to digital transition, so I decided to make the etching digitally in my own studio. In so doing I’ve learnt a lot, and tested a lot of new ideas for my printmaking practice.

The work is retouched from the original drawing and blended with elements of my ongoing photopolymer work. I’ve added real etching artefacts, inc a very fine dot screen, which the etching process requires to define tonal shifts. I’ve also added the filed and inked roughened edges that an etching plate has, and very carefully debossed the work into the paper. Perhaps most interestingly, I’ve printed the work on uncoated Somerset paper, as a wet etching would be, and I’ve passed the paper through the press twice, to double up on the deepest black tones, which also creates some interesting registration artefacts, as would happen with a duotone etching. You’ll see that there is a subtle colour shift with slightly steely blue tinges, and soft hue shifts in the whiter areas too.

I’ll be interested to see if any of the selectors notices or comments on the nature of the inking and print generally, or more likely I suspect, if it simply goes unnoticed, which ultimately is my intention. To use digital processes to create hybrid works that are indistinguishable from more traditional technologies; and then build on top of that of course!

There’s a philosophically interesting debate to be had around whether art needs to be made in a particular way, a debate that is getting shriller as AI moves ever further into our lives. Is the craft aspect of the making critical to the power of an artwork, or can an artwork rise above the technology of it’s own making, irrespective of it’s origination. Does a plate need to be inked by hand, or can it be inked digitally. Where is the line? I suspect that the dialogue will shift at both ends of the spectrum, simultaneously. I think we’ll see a move towards more haptic making in the face of the AI revolution, and also a move towards more amazing, futuristic works that take ever more advantage of the latest toolsets. For the moment, it all seems fascinating to me, I’m trying to keep an open mind!

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Read the full blog post here >
https://chuckelliott.com/news/print-club-news-12th-august-2025