Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
Robert Gordon University
"Grays' Portfolios: Portfolio 6 " - portfolio of work which Agnew curated and contributed to.
Through Portfolio 6 Agnew questions and re-evaluates existing knowledge surrounding the archetype of how the print portfolio is conceived, received, functions or has functioned previously (e.g. Exquisite Corpse by the Chapman brothers, Paragon Press 2000). The research embraces the qualities and individual choices of the traditional printmaking language, embracing changes in technology. Portfolio 6 distinguishes itself from an accepted understanding of the “limited edition”, essentially a reproductive process, retaining the notion of the original print.
These original artworks set out to challenge existing norms of production and dissemination. The work was generated in response to a brief initiated by Agnew. The significance of this approach is three fold. Firstly, the curatorial approach draws together the work of a range of artists, cutting across normal professional hierarchies. They are selected because of their commitment to the research aim. Secondly, the portfolio itself has a dual purpose and mobility as both exhibition and publication. High quality prints are assembled and distributed as a “box set”, which is both artifact and publication. Thirdly, the role of editor and curator is conflated with the role of an artist. Agnew utilises the portfolio project within his own personal practice, to explore unique possibilities of meaning that emerge at the juncture between traditional mechanised forms of physical print production and new digital/virtual forms of “re-production”, with playful reversals such as digital representation as a physical collage.
In this the way Portfolio 6 is simultaneously a shared and individual endeavour that retains high-level production values and maintains control in the hands of the individual through pre- and post- curatorial interventions.
The work was exhibited at
• Inverness Museum and Art Gallery [2009]http://inverness.highland.museum/whatsOn.php?id=62
• Anchor Graphics, Columbia College, Chicago [2009 & 2010]
• Global Implications, Southern Graphics Council Conference, Chicago, USA(2009).
http://www.colum.edu/Academics/Art_and_Design/Facilities/Anchor_Graphics/Exhibitions/The_Fish_Tank/Folio6.php
