Print Club News / 12th August 2025
Editions #31 & 32
Phase TWO / EPC / hi chroma
ReVOX / silvered / EPC hybrid
Hello,
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!
Phase TWO. I’ve printed the work as a ten colour pigment print on the new PermaJet Titanium metallic, which has a lovely almost iridescent feel. The contrast between this and the mono etching on Somerset could hardly be any wider. You’ll notice that the print is ‘tipped in’ to a tightly fitted debossed panel on the Somerset paper, that helps hold the edge quite well I think. It’s significantly more minimal that previous editions where I’ve used a small holding gap or shadow gap, rather than going straight in. Straight in is far harder to achieve of course, the fit has to be tight, but it makes for a more minimal effect that I’m enjoying at the moment. The edge of the colour work is a little ragged, as the coating on the paper scuffs a little under the scalpel’s blade. After some thought, I’ve decided to make a virtue of this, and so ‘rolled off’ the ink all around the edge, with my thumb, to give a fairly even almost scumbled finish. I think it makes the most of what might otherwise appear flawed! Ultimately I have to embrace the materiality of the different aspects of each piece, the gains and the losses.
I was chatting with Martyn Grimmer, a fabulous printmaker and artist who teaches at Spike. He told me that, in his experience, you start out early in your career being pretty happy with virtually everything you make; then later on you start to apply a more critical gaze, and begin to be dissatisfied with some aspects of what you’ve made; and finally you almost cease to be able to complete works, as your critical thoughts completely stymie the process of making. The search for perfection. I thought this was a really interesting lesson, and as I found myself almost surgically scuffing the edges of the inked prints, I knew that he had a point! I am going to try to remain ‘zoomed out’ as much as possible, and try not to let the minutiae of the details suspend or upend the joy of the making. It’s a tricky thing to pull off of course, and doesn’t sit easily with my approach to fine detailing.
I’ll look forward to posting some more news and views when I have them. There are a couple of shows coming up, one in the City in the Spring, and a few fairs, including Ink Miami and London Art Fair, so lots to be getting on with as the Autumn comes in.
Wishing you all the best until then,
Chuck Elliott
PS If your membership is currently paused, but you’d like this piece for your home, please do resubscribe and I’ll send it out to you.
