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About XGen / spiked
XGen / spiked / EPC is the 27th work for my Experimental Print Club. I editioned the piece at Spike Print Studio in May 2024, with help and expert guidance from Martyn Grimmer.
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XGen / spiked / EPC #27
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Photopolymer etching on Somerset Velvet Radiant White 280gsm
Edition of 20, plus 2 APs
Printed at Spike Print Studio, May / June 2024
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Sheet size 32cm H x 26.4cm W
Image size 19.8cm H x 14.4cm W
In situ and in the studio
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.
From my news blog, 14th June 2024
I’ve been having a great time this week, working at Spike Print Studio making the first of what I think will be many etchings. As you’ll know from previous posts, I have several plates on the go, ReVOX and Sennen, but the first one to actually be editioned this week, largely because the plate has great tone and is therefore ‘print ready’ was XGen.
I’ve cropped it to a portrait format, and printed it with a mixture of blue and black inks, that lend it a cool mono feel on a radiant white Somerset paper. I finished printing the edition yesterday evening, and the prints are now stacked and will dry over the weekend. I then need to collect them, trim them, sign and edition them, and post them out to you.
I’m hoping to continue visiting Spike regularly, so the next piece shouldn’t be too far behind this one. I want to use a Chine Collé technique on it, so there’s some more learning to be done to really get that at least some version of mastered. It’s quite a fiddly process, and my hands are not particularly delicate with fiddly tasks!
There’s some brave talk in the studio of floating the Kozo paper in a water bath, and then dipping the printing plate under it, and picking the Kozo up as a kind of wet transfer, as the plate comes back out of the water, inked and ready to print. But the alignment has to be spot on, so it’s an interesting and difficult challenge.
The community of makers at Spike has been something of a revelation this week, people are quietly getting on with their projects, but also discussing and critiquing, sharing mugs of tea and tips on process and technique. I can almost feel my practice expanding just by being in the space. In essence there is an old fashioned art school vibe in the air, which is really energising.
This piece in many ways is a process experiment more than anything else. Can I edition a print successfully using photopolymer, as opposed to furthering the narrative arc of the practice. It’s not a new drawing in other words, but as always, ideas for new drawings flow from the practice and the process, so I think it’s best to view this piece as a rung on the ladder, a stepping stone to a new place, as opposed to a destination in itself. To some extent all the works are that of course. The answer to the question is yes, the edition is really uniform, and has gone well, so I feel the process has been a real success.
Read the full blog post here >
https://chuckelliott.com/news/xgen-epc-spiked
From my news blog / 25 June, 2024
So, I completed printing EPC edition #27 last week, and left it drying under the boards at Spike for a further week, collecting it and trimming the edition yesterday. It’s now packed and ready to post. I hope you like it when you see it.
There’s an interesting quality to photopolymer etching, and it’s been really fascinating to work at Spike making the edition. There’s a deep rooted belief amongst practitioners that these older analogue techniques offer something real, something grounded, something material, that the digital perhaps can’t achieve, but I’m not entirely convinced. It’s maybe a little like those people who swear by vinyl LP records, or shooting on 35mm film. I always wonder if it’s more of a belief system than an observable reality.
That said there is something really beautiful about the bite of the plate into the damp paper, and as you ink up the plate and roll the press you definitely get a sense of something physical happening. I had an interesting debate with a fellow printmaker at Spike, and asked her if she felt the process was to some extent a craft rather than an art. She wasn’t having any of it of course, but I think there is a craft element in play, that sense of the handmade that we are naturally drawn to.
Read the full blog post here >
https://chuckelliott.com/news/xgen-epc-dispatched
Associated works
