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34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Salford
Starting from printmaking - A body of works presented in the exhibition ‘Starting From Printmaking’ at the Art Museum, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Guangzhou, China, coinciding with the 11th Annual Printmaking Conference for Universities and Colleges, November 2012. Exhibition and conference curated by Professor Li Quan Min, Head of Printmaking at GAFA
This research investigated processes for producing autographic printmaking plates with the aid of digital technology. It included industrial manufacturing and prototyping techniques using vector images, and the use of bitmap image data (pixel light values) to provide limits for positive (relief) and negative (recessive) spatial extents, analogous to 3D ‘bump-map’ rendering.
It questioned how the physically manipulated plate or block, which is materially altered through the production of a printmaking matrix, equates in philosophical aesthetic terms to a unique sculptural art object. The theoretical context for this included the formal classification of space ‘as a limit’ and ‘as an environment’ (Focillon), and the ‘type/token’ ontological relationship (Wollheim, Pierce, et al) between the informational matrix in digital form, and its manifestation in a potentially infinite number of notionally identical forms, which are, nonetheless, each unique (Goodman).
Methods focused on the production of ‘identical’ objects through laser-cutting or CNC-routing vector and pixel-based source files, in wood or cibatool (so-called ‘synthetic wood’), which were subsequently intentionally made unique through further manual manipulation, or individuated through identification or exploitation of physical inconsistencies such as in organic or found materials, and were thus conceptually and aesthetically differentiated as unique art objects.
2 examples of this work were presented in the major survey exhibition ‘Starting from Printmaking’ at the Art Museum, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, where I am a visiting professor. It coincided with the 11th Annual Printmaking Conference for Universities and Colleges, which included papers from artists/researchers in leading Chinese academies (I was the only UK speaker). I was subsequently invited to teach in a number of these, and hosted GAFA’s Head of Printmaking at Salford, to deliver workshops based on his research. Further development of this network includes plans for regular student exchange workshops and exhibitions of collaborative research between Salford and Guangzhou.
