Threads of Time
Eight Women Print
About the Artists
Jenny Crispin studied and worked as a potter for over 10 years before developing her interest in printmaking. Her exploration of form, function and construction in ceramics has informed her interest in creating 3D structures from 2D prints and she enjoys building three dimensional forms using prints created using different printmaking techniques; predominantly monoprints and relief printing from lino. Recently she has begun incorporating different materials into these structures; using wire and thread to add different dimensions. The shadows and shapes cast by these sculptures often leads to the development of new print ideas. The recent constraints of lockdown, with the lack of access to a print studio, have necessitated a simpler yet more experimental approach and her current work combines and layers monoprints, cyanotypes and linocuts. Jenny Crispin is based in London.
Sarrah El-Bushra explores her experience of being a mixed-race woman, coming from two very different cultures in her art practice. Using an abstract fusion of English and Arabic calligraphy, Sarrah layers text and imagery to represent multi-layered cultural experience and thoughts on identity and belonging. Cultural influences come from her Sudanese/British heritage and the time she spent living in the Sudan as a teenager, as well as wider Arab and Middle Eastern influences. Calligraphy and abstract pattern, which are important elements in art from the MENA region, are key in her work, which uses calligraphic markings and forms to create pattern and accents. Sarrah’s work encompasses a variety of printmaking techniques including screen printing, intaglio, digital print and freehand lettering on paper and textiles dyed using natural pigments from Sudan, including henna, and hibiscus. Sarrah El-Bushra is based in London.
Instagram.com/sarrahelb
www.sarrahelbushra.wordpress.com
Giorgia Grassini is interested in storytelling, especially myths, folktales, and fairy tales, and is a firm believer that stories teach, inspire and unite people through generations. Giorgia’s work is characterised by vibrant colours and textures. The artist is fascinated by processes, she experiments and mixes different printmaking techniques in her creations. Preferring relief, she is fond of the practicality of the medium and the meditative and calming effect of the carving practice. She prints on different surfaces, creating collages, art books, and animating her work. Giorgia Grassini was born and raised in Italy, currently based in London, and has a degree in Interior Design awarded by the Politecnico di Milano in Italy.
Lorena Herrero is a multidisciplinary Spanish artist based in London. She is interested in materials and their potential as a medium to express emotions and feelings. Her practice is mostly focused on tapping into the inner-self and unconsciousness to express a range of emotions and responses to the outside world. As an artist she is learning to trust her creative instinct, to allow the making process to lead her and to become less self-conscious of the outcome. Her current body of work uses waste materials such as polystyrene and wire to create expressive sculptural forms in a way that is both playful and natural to her. With a background in printmaking, in recent years. Lorena Herrero has extended her practice to include various media and techniques. Her work has become more sculptural and abstract often just limited to black and white.
Instagram.com/lorena.herrero
www.lorenaherrero.com
Alpana Kishore investigates ideas of exclusion, nationhood and belonging through digital and traditional printmaking processes. These explorations often include wider strands of questioning and resistance emerging from today’s global climate of narrowing identities. Alpana’s Indian origins, her journalistic and research practice over three decades and her role as an urban activist, are powerful source-experiences for her themes. She draws extensively upon the frames of identity and conflict in her printmaking practice. She uses her interest in photographic imagery expanded by traditional printmaking processes such as screenprinting, intaglio and relief. Alpana Kishore is based in London and New Delhi.
Jane Laborie’s current work explores our rich, inner world – the subconscious. She is interested in the multiplicity within ourselves; our fantasies, truths, disappointments and anxieties. She attempts to capture what lies beneath; the layers, the depth of our feelings and how they are caught up in unnatural spaces, emotional islets. Through the use of monoprints, mark making, dry point, hard ground, soft ground, soap ground, scraping substances off and reintroducing them, burnishing, aquatint and acid baths; her prints evoke our unseen state of mind. On the one hand the image is identifiable, and on the other an abstracted depiction, revealing the contradictory and complex nature of our psyche. Jane Laborie is based in London.
Eleanor Morris investigates ways in which feelings can be communicated through the tactile qualities of printmaking processes. Her monoprinting and other techniques involve looking at the rhythms and patterns evolving from a shape or mark and its connection to certain emotions experienced. She views printmaking as an on-going process of discovery, encompassing both surprises and technique. Whilst she enjoys discovering beauty in the materials used and engagement with the various techniques, she also loves the element of uncertainty and unknown possibility as the work evolves. She is interested in the continuous cycle of nature and how things that are discarded or destroyed can be elevated and made beautiful. These sentiments inform Eleanor’s printmaking and combine to reflect nature’s fragility and embody nature’s cycle and our interdependency. She enjoys recycling discarded work, deconstructing it and making it into small handmade books and folded paper sculptures. Eleanor Morris is based in London.
Delia M O’Leary is based in Norfolk. The exploration of texture rather than image dominates her work. A fractured piece of rock, rotting wood, mud flats as the tide sucks the water out, rusty metal and flaking tree bark all feed into her work. Intermingled with texture is the awareness of an image fleetingly seen, a face reflected in a lens, a smile half hidden by the light. The printmaking process is fascinating and endlessly engaging. The multiplicity of choices involved at each stage of the process can be daunting although, as for many printmakers, for Delia the process itself is as important and satisfying as the final print.