Tekton / X26, audio notes

View the Experimental Print club edition here >

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Transcript of the audio notes

I’ve been thinking about making some new audio notes for this latest piece of work. I thought it might be a nice way to present some new ideas.

There’s an underlying geometry which is really based on a tiled X form, which spins out from the middle. The tiling concept is something that you see all over the Islamic world, and in countries I’ve visited recently like Spain and the Alhambra.

There’s a beauty in that kind of underlying geometry which is very two dimensional and decorative, and allows you to have a kind of tiled form on which to hang colour, glaze and pattern. So I wanted to do a piece around those kind of themes, that maybe could look at a very two dimensional approach to image making; a little bit different from the normal more three dimensional sculptural forms that I might draw.

I realised looking at the geometry of the tiling that I could create another of my X series, as opposed to the circular pieces. There’s a particular energy in the X which I’ve talked about at some length before; which has the ability to hold the centre of the image in a slightly explosive way, but because of the way the geometry is tiled it kind of comes back in almost like parenthesis or brackets around the X which kind of contains some of that energy I think.

So to start off with I made a kind of five colour underlying study where the pieces are tessellated and start with quite a dark centre, a kind of deep indigo and then move out into golds and coppers and browns around the edge. I wanted to bring in a lot of white on this study as well, kind of highlight areas, so I bought in these kind of triangulated pieces which would slot into the overall geometry and create these kind of diamonds of movement that would push the tiled pieces around a little bit and bring an extra energy. I kind of banked on that idea right at the beginning as a way of bringing life into the study, and those pieces you can see right through to the end of the process that kind of underlie a lot of the colour and the paint that’s on top.

So having got the geometry set up I wanted to use a really painterly technique that would be very very loose; kind of loose patches of colour and loose line work that would overlay the geometry and kind of… I like that idea… the combination of the stiffness of the geometry and the looseness of the line kind of counterpoint each other in a way that brings energy to the final piece; and would be difficult to do in more traditional media; if you were dripping paint like Jackson Pollock or someone like that, although you could kind of get the line work, you wouldn’t be able to get it overlaying the geometry in such a rigid and structured way; and equally well at the other end of the scale with someone like Victor Vassarelly or Bridget Riley, they haven’t got the looseness in the technique of the paint application; you get a much more rigid two dimensional geometry. So I like that idea of trying to bring those two things together and create something that is somehow cohesive and sits in the space, in the interstitial space, between those two ideas.

So, I started working on the colour studies, bringing the colour palette onto the main geometry and then bringing that through into these linework forms. Each line is drawn individually, and they are layered up one by one by one, as is the palette, the flat colour palettes and the colour pieces. They’re slowly just built up and built up, until it seems finished, and I guess that’s a three or four week process. This study that we’re looking at is the first colour way and maybe I’ll go back and re-edit some more, although I’m not sure that I will.

I think it’s a fairly complete study, it’s very sort of symmetrical, and I’m not sure about that, in a way I like to find some asymmetry in the studies, so it’s maybe quite rigid on the wall; I’m living with that and thinking about it; and the main event I think will be 1.6m high by 1.28m wide, which is the same size as the Arpeggi / REZ / silvered work I made a while ago. It’s a nice size for a good size interior, sort of five feet high, and in this case will be made out of five slotted horizontal panels, which accentuate the idea of the X form and the tiled pieces; but actually don’t align with it, which is quite interesting I think.

The cut lines don’t line up where the geometry actually breaks itself; and it’s got this kind of glitch going on which I really like. That’s to do with the way the geometry is layered into space, it’s the kind of inflection points as it changes direction, and has a certain kind of perspective which moves them in the space, it means they’re not all lined up; there’s an arcing (quality) to them which is rather beautiful. It adds in a whole load of interesting details to where the colours switch direction and creates these little kind of glitched pieces of panels of colour, and details or flecks on the final picture. 

So, for the experimental print club edition, of course, I thought it would be nice to make a kind of maquette print. It’s a way of creating a kind of first look at the first palette; and although the print club edition doesn’t have the kind of scale I would want in the final work, I still think it makes a kind of small, bookish piece that might sit next to a light switch in a room, or somehow inhabit a small space (maybe) in a corridor where you can get, maybe, a kind of close up view; where you can get quite an intimate look at the colours that are there; and then later on of course I’m planning to make a much bigger version of it to hang in the gallery. Not sure when that will be, but maybe it will become one of the pieces for the Royal West of England Academy’s Open Autumn show later in the year. If it gets selected, which is a very big if of course!

There’s something of Peter Lanyon there; there’s a lot of mid-century modern in the palette. I really love those earthy tones that he uses, combined with the blues and golds, so you get this sense of the landscape and seascape. I think he used to hang-glide and you get this kind of, in his work, this kind of view, a bird’s eye view of the landscape which is fantastic. I wanted to take on some of that quality, so instead of using the more candied colours that I sometimes go for, or the bigger palettes, I wanted to use something which has a kind of earth like quality almost; tectonic, hence the name; you know sometimes when you’re on a beach or maybe by a rock pool and you see the layers and strata of rocks around you, maybe back up in the cliff edge; or just layered in the rock forms as they break up on the edge of the sea; you get these amazing golds and browns and coppers coming through the earthy rock tones. it’s not an area that I know a huge amount about, but the optics of it are always really beautiful, the way the water can come on and brighten the colours as it gets wet.

So I’ll probably image the main work on a metallic paper, to just really kick the colours up, so that although they are not in themselves bright, they will have a kind of iridescence which I think will be really beautiful, almost as though they are wet. The print club edition on the other hand is on Hahnemühle matt paper, beautiful matt paper, and yeah, I hope it beds in well.

That’s probably all I want to say about this work, I’m looking forward to the next piece, and yeah, I’ll be sending it out in the post in the next few days.

OK, I hope you like it when you see it…

Chuck Elliott