Printing_Multi-plate and Artists Book_Final

The final images were photographed in a three hour setting, rain, sun, humidity, wind and a fair bit of moving around. The rice paper tore, but that didn't bother me - again, mishaps... The final object, is a rolled manuscript type object - wrapped in hessian sacking with ties and raffia - heavy and precious feeling - that's what I like the most about it...

I found my final prints resolved my idea of text and texture, reveal and conceal and the transformation of the mask. My final project developed directly from the project 4 resolved prints. For the final project, my intention was to keep with the book as an object, layered, and telling a story – as a recorded installation. The book tells a story, it reveals the plot as it moves from open, read, and closed. And the mask is used traditionally in a ceremony in which it is put on or constructed. Then, the wearer 'transcends'. Once the ritual is over, the celebration ends, and the mask is ceremoniously wrapped and placed in a sacred location, waiting for its next celebration. I hoped to construct these stories through the installation.

I wanted to present my prints simply and thoughtfully – using the hessian sacking as a book cover, the round spirals as the book spine and the pages as multi-plate experiments.

Through both exercises, and the presentation of the outcomes in this submission, I felt a sense of process progression and transformation of my initial concept. I began to realize through the outcomes that there is a greater degree of intuition involved with my work, which I hoped to convey. If found myself considering multiple outcomes, and ultimately trying out each avenue I thought might be representative of text and the book. The collagraphs for example, took longer than expected, because I found myself exploring more as I reached a point where a plate no longer 'worked'. I tried conventional techniques, and found this limited the sense of freedom I had felt with the initial monographs I had connected with.

Throughout the processes I experimented with various papers, techniques, textures, materials and concepts, to transform not only the concept of the mask, but how it could be used in a rhythmic, intuitive, 'transcendental' way which also reflected the artists and writers I'd been influenced by.

I researched artists who express an 'incidental' or intuitive approach to their work, such as Lucy Freud, Joseph Beuys, Marcel Duchamp, William Kentridge, Marlene Dumas and Henri Michaux. I investigated writers and poets that had a similar approach.

My approach to both exercises, was to to start with an image (often of a mask) or artists work, word, sentence etc. and never to preconceive the end result. This facilitated abstraction, and allowed an intuitive approach to the development of a piece. I digested all the visuals and writings I come into contact with, from history and 'now' and applied all this information to my workings.

With the scale and size of the works, I felt most comfortable with a larger size – most of the final prints being just under A3 in size. For the final project, I kept with the size but decided to explore works having borders – I began each print as a circle, which was then reflected in final circular shape of the installation – this to me was fitting for the theme of transformation being like a cycle of change, which again, is important to the mask and its 'life' cycle as a ceremonial artifact.