Extended Research
After my initial visits to the Drawing Room in Unit 1, I felt the extended research was an exciting chance to partake in informative research and began thinking about all the different ways I might go about it. Some of the many directions I travelled on my research journey included: researching rubbings at the British museum; I thought about archeology collections and archives that housed rubbings; I thought about how my original degree in classics might be helpful in approaching material collections such as ancient mosaics or other historically important sites; I considered historic sites and features such as the steps of the Bodleian library at oxford university; I attempted to research about the possibility of accessing abandoned buildings and even looked into haunted spaces in London that might have some significance. All these ideas are exciting and perhaps are worth further consideration.
Allegra Pesenti Interview
My first breakthrough with an external partner was to contact Allegra Pesenti, who agreed to a written interview. I managed to get her email after contacting the Hammer Museum, where she used to work. Pesenti was the curator of the exhibition and subsequent publication “Apparitions: Frottages and Rubbings from 1860 to Now, Feb 7–May 31, 2015”. This text was important for my research, and I had many questions since reading it. The interview went as follows:
Tom Harper:
In a time when touch is so transgressive, how relevant is bringing back a sense of touch and connection in the world through art?
Allegra Pesenti:
I think a sense of touch and connection are forever vital to art, and of course it is all the more relevant at the heels of the pandemic in which we have been physically distanced from both human and material ‘closeness’.
Tom Harper:
I’m interested in how you came to select the artists that you did and the works that you showed. Perhaps you could talk a little bit more about what drew you to these artists and works?
Allegra Pesenti:
Artists immersed in the practice of rubbing and related work appeared in my path as soon as I started thinking about the subject both historically and in the present. A revelatory moment was Jennifer Bornstein’s exhibition at Gavin Brown’s in New York city, in which she rubbed the entire surface of the floors of the gallery and placed the sheets of paper on the walls, creating a monumental reversal of space and sense of disorientation. I was also struck by how the marks of the floors emphasized the site’s age and history, as if she were retrieving its ghosts from its inner linings. Bornstein’s rubbing practice evolved from abstraction to figuration and remained a main point of inspiration throughout my research on the subject.
Tom Harper:
You write about traces in the exhibition and how recording objects, surfaces or places can reveal and assume a new presence as rubbings. I am very interested in rubbing to reveal void spaces such as cracks, scores or the tiniest marks of wear and tear. Perhaps you could tell me more about frottage’s power to transcend its subject matter and create new meanings?
Allegra Pesenti:
There is an element of wonder and unexpectedness in rubbings which is what made the practice so appealing to Surrealist artists. Max Ernst found his deepest fantasies in the grains of the wood of his floorboards. A comb easily morphed into an animal’s body. I think that ability to ’transfigure’ objects and to see beyond their common forms and uses is at the core of this form of artistic expression.
Tom Harper:
Is there any way that you think rubbing and frottage has changed and developed as a contemporary art practice since the exhibition?
Allegra Pesenti:
Artists continue to experiment with rubbing and frottage and the practice continues to stretch into new territories - whether sensory, physical, or performative. The Jazz musician and composer Jason Moran traces the taps of his keyboard onto paper and creates some of the most poignant and deeply moving ‘recordings’ of his sounds and improvisations.
Tom Harper:
And what is it about rubbing that draws artists time and time again to use this most basic and ancient of drawing methods; What is it about this process that keeps it relevant in contemporary art and in particular drawing?
Allegra Pesenti:
Perhaps the very fact that it is so basic and accessible, yet also deeply layered and complex in its possibilities.
Tom Harper: Since Apparitions, frottage and rubbings are being used as the mainstay of artists like Ingrid Calame and strongly featuring in the work of high-profile artists such as Kiki Smith and Catherine Anyango Grünewald. Have any artists stood out for you since the exhibition that you think are important and that you would have included in the exhibition if it had been put on today?
Allegra Pesenti:
As I mention above, Jason Moran for sure. I love the work of Kiki Smith and would certainly include her if I were to do a take two of this exhibition. There are so many artists I would have loved to include but couldn’t for reasons of space and accessibility…so I’ll save that list for the next iteration!
Raquel Serrano Interview
Raquel Serrano is a fine art doctorate student at the university of seville. She was awarded a fellowship in print at Camberwell College of Art in the spring term of 2022. She uses rubbings and frottage and plans to continue to do so as part of her research. I asked her if she was willing to do a short, informal interview and she most gratifyingly agreed.
Here is what transpired:
Tom Harper:
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What is it about frottage that excites you and how did you come to see this as an important part of your practice?
Raquel Serrano:
I became interested in frottage from my PhD supervisor María del Mar Bernal who wrote a great article on the subject. (https://tecnicasdegrabado.es/2020/el-frottage-todo-esta-en-el-roce). I am interested in experimentation with the printed image and how printing can turn into drawing. The images produced by say rubbings replaces the reality of what was there. I want to question what the reality of an image is. I like how rubbings can look like quite abstract images but are in fact highly representational. So, the image is the surface, but the surface is moved from its original place. I’m playing with our concept of an image and the concept of perception.
Tom Harper:
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What new materials are you using to make your rubbings and why?
Raquel Serrano:
I have been working with canvas recently and I have found it can be very pragmatic in a lot of situations, especially when you are outside and rubbing on the ground. Before I was working with large sheets of paper, using a sponge and graphite powder to apply the rubbing. I have found that, unlike paper, fabrics like canvas are both more durable, and much more pragmatic when you are outside. They will not ruin if they get wet and they can even be machine washed if you apply fixating beforehand. They do not weigh much so they can easily be transported, and it allows you to work in large formats since it is difficult to find paper rolls of that magnitude. I also found that you can add eyelets and can easily be stretched out in a space like a painting. This makes them very pragmatic for very large rubbings in a way that paper just doesn’t easily allow for, especially when thinking about hanging them in a space. They also have a more haptic element to them; in that they can become quite sculptural. You can fold, crumple and manipulate them in many ways.
Raquel, Serrano, Transfer the surface, Frottage graphite on canvas, 100 x 375 cm 2022
Tom Harper:
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What artists have you researched and what is it about their work that you find fascinating?
Raquel Serrano:
I am interested in the works of Juan Carlos Bracho who has rubbed the walls of a gallery space with graphite. By drawing directly onto the walls in this way, he creates beautiful ephemeral drawings, that get erased from the space after the exhibition ends. I am interested in the imprintment of the land itself and have appreciation for the work of Andrea Gregson, who takes large scale rubbings of rock formations. All these artists reflect on the space itself, moving the surfaces, manipulating them, folding them and turning the images of reality into three-dimensional elements, which invite the viewer to inhabit the image
This interview was great for considering my methods and new choices of materials and the artists who use them. I experimented with using canvas for rubbings as I may wish to use it in the future if I go outside or for works that need to be hardier and need to be on the floor or manipulated in some way. (see process and critical reflection).
Taking rubbings at the Type Archive
After doing some research to see where I might find some historic printing machinery to further my research, I came across The Type Archive, which housed an assemblage of historic printing presses. I spoke with the curator, Sallie Morris, and to my delight I was given not only a tour of the archive but also allowed to take some rubbings of the machinery.
The archive has some truly amazing artifacts from the past and it was fascinating to delve deeper into the history of print. I settled on the Wharfdale-style machine called the “Defiance”, which was made in Yorkshire by inventor David Payne back in the 1860’s. This machine revolutionised the printing trade and it was an incredible honour and with great excitement that I undertook the task of producing a print of the press that had created perhaps millions of prints itself. The extra weight of historical importance of the machine was something I had never been able to engage with before with a space or object and it really added to the interest and significance of the work for me.
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Rubbing the Wharfdale not only helped me further develop my visual language but also formed a greater emotional connection with these archaic, increasingly rare artifacts. This feeling was only enhanced by the knowledge that the archive was losing its funding and would no longer be open to visitors. The very machine I was rubbing would soon be stored away somewhere indefinitely, behind closed doors. I came closer to understanding why these machines have emotional significance and importance. The arts and culture are under increasing threat and these prints could perhaps be a way of showing what we are losing as a society.
The experience of this enigmatic space and its relics, dripping with the history and the importance of Britain’s cultural and technological heritage makes me keen for further opportunities. There are other institutions that I could attempt to contact based on connections I have made with the curator there. I feel trying to approach collections, archives and institutions of this sort could be an important part of my practice in the future.
White Chapel Gallery
I have been interested in what it is about the studio and creative spaces that fascinate me and why they are worth commemorating through my interventions. I wished to contextualise my understanding of the wider debate surrounding the studio in contemporary art practice and so after doing some research I went to Whitechapel Gallery to gain further insight. I was most fortunate that it was having an exhibition that touched on this issue. The exhibition itself, A century of the artist’s studio 1920-2020 was very illuminating, concerning itself with the notion of the studio space, both as a public space to showcase the artists identity or as a private space to "take refuge, reflect, experiment and even cannibalise the studio itself." (see contexts to read more about how this important exhibition helped my practice).
TOM HARPER
PROCESS AND CRITICAL REFLECTION
This page will act as a record of my process. I will document and critically reflect on my work and thoughts in the process of making. It is a journal of my art and the story of my methodology and practice.
Research Project Aims
The aim of my research project is to reflect on our relationship with spaces and the objects that inhabit them. My drawing and printmaking interventions are currently particularly drawn to the workshops, studios and creative spaces that unearth the hidden traces and residues of making in action. I am interested in questioning how the viewer perceives spaces and objects around them. Through drawing as an expanded field, I wish to reinterpret surfaces, objects and space, often haptically and sculpturally, to reveal and commemorate the often overlooked, discarded, the old, the worn down, the forgotten and the oblivious. Capturing the fragments of history of an object or space, and the idea of creating a kind of communal drawing from the remnants of human activity are important parts of my research. I am working towards a greater understanding of my research aims.
PRINT ROOM AND THE PRINTING PRESS
Print Room rubbings, both finished works and sketches
Rubbing of the Print Room Table Worktop
In the run up to Unit 1 and in the days after, I looked at continuing to develop my Print Room Table Frottage Rubbing Etching. I etched the plate for a long time so that the hard ground marks became prominent on the top of it. I then went even further by adding a layer of aquatint onto newly made hard ground lines to really embolden those lines and produce a rich tone around them. The idea was to make the work become more architectural and representational, so that you could see behind the lines. The act of referencing hard ground etching, by using the process in the image itself and by really working back into the surface material of the plate, recentres the work around drawing, etching and its processes. I attempted to visually emphasise the shapes and areas that I thought could perhaps trigger ideas of a process taking place, trying in some way to illustrate the abstract nature of what a “process” is. I looked at organic structures such neurons that work with the brain’s process of memory as well thinking about bringing out shapes that could be symbolic of biomechanical structures within a greater framework.
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Sketchbook pages thinking about concept
I then worked back into the plate with charcoal and Brasso, rubbing and polishing the plate to bring back the highlights that I wanted to emphasise. Engaging with the surface in this way and burnishing the highlights, seems to produce an auratic quality so that the gradation of darker areas allows the whites to really juxtapose against the background. These actions allowed parts to fade in and out, perhaps like a memory, reminiscent of recollection in the structures of the brain, or perhaps the spark of an idea?
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Early stage etching, etching near current state
More broadly, these rubbings are indicative of my attempts to discover the world around me, and engage with material objects, especially the print room and its various mechanisms and constructs. They are also, for me, about the passage of time and collective memory. They speak to the notion of a shared connection between the myriad of creative hands reaching back across time to produce a kind of shared collaborative drawing of a surface in a communal creative space. Every scrape and cut, every gesture of making is like a drawing for me. This idea is very much in keeping with Rachel Whiteread works that talks about “shared experiences” and “communal traces” from the imprints of spaces and objects. Do Ho Suh’s frottage projects also address the idea of a shared experience through drawing. I am thinking about what can be considered a drawing, and what is meaningful and valuable in our everyday experience.
I plan to move forward with these prints by taking certain other sections of the original cropped imagery and creating a larger, fragmented tapestry of different sized cropped rubbings. I hope to bring forth feelings of fragmentation, memory and the past traces of making within the framework of the process of etching. It is a print about a “void space” that has such a rich history of human presence but also drawing and etching, engaged with the process of etching itself.
Making Rubbings in the Print Room
After the assessment feedback for Unit 1 I decided to change my approach and focus on haptic experiences and the wider questions surrounding it. I reflected on how my prints were not presently bringing forth this idea of the haptic or being entirely relatable to the print room. I therefore changed focus and produced more representational frottages in the print room and my studio. I was emboldened to try much more ambitious rubbings, playing with the scale of the images and complexity of the process. I wanted to really expand my practice in terms of how long I spent focusing on an object, sometimes creating several rubbings of the same object until I picked up the essential qualities that I wanted to bring out. At other times, I took a very sculptural approach to my practice that perhaps questions what drawing is and touches on the expanded field of drawing. I wanted to take risks and really lose myself in the process.
I began searching for new material and was extremely impressed by the sculptural rubbings that Do Ho Suh was able to produce simply by using paper and colored pencils to capture the memories and traces of his existence in his old apartment in New York. I had this idea to create a rubbing of a printing press, rubbing every single surface, every facet of it, to get grips with my obsession with intaglio printmaking. I wanted to then turn this into a fully erect and free-standing paper sculpture, utilizing wire as a sort of armature or skeleton to hold it up. I then went back into the studio nurturing this idea, that seemed to me nearly impossible.
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Small Intaglio Printing Press and Sketch
In order to build myself up to the challenge I practiced paper manipulation techniques, in conjunction with attempting to glean Suh’s methodology of producing his works.
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Sketch Book and Paper Sculpture Experiments
I then thought about taking rubbings from the etching room floor and experimenting with making frottage sculptures. I considered for some time the stains that most fascinated me and experimented with different softness, sizes and types of pencil, as well as the selection and arrangement of the ink stains and other detritus that I felt were particularly appealing. Isa Genzken’s imprints of her studio floor came to mind for me during this period, her Basic Research (1989) paintings in which she took printed stains from her studio with canvas and paint, as well making sculptures from the detritus from her studio, feeling like an inspiring and expressive direction.
Armed with only a cutting board, scissors, a scalpel, glue and my fingers I learnt different ways to curve, fold, burnish, roll and shape frottages that I took from the etching room floor that have always been of some fascination to me in the past.
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Print Room Ink stains
I felt that both the light and dark pencil marks had successful qualities whereas the large graphite pencil gave out less detail and was less so. I manipulated these selections into various shapes with the hopes of one day turning them, my desire to reproduce a full printing press notwithstanding, into much larger sculptures.
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Print Room Ink stains Frottage Sculptures
I was influenced by the work of Jane Eaton1, who turned frottages into sculptural iterations, and felt there was a great deal of rich territory to develop here in the future. I thought they may also be worth printing out as etchings and then cut and manipulated, as an expanded field of printing making, into more sculptural territory. I am similarly interested in the idea of possibly making them into etched metal sculptures at a later stage.
I moved onto attempting to make more complex sculptural representations, experimenting with bottles as a means to try to understand how to practically manipulate paper around a more complex series of shapes.
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Frottage Bottle Sculpture and Paper Sculpture sketchbook Notes
After further researching Suh’s methods I found that he used a kind of paste to allow him to come up with the more sculptural iterations of his rubbing practice, which is something in a busy, communal print room environment, I would struggle to replicate.
Not disheartened, I began taking various rubbings in the print room, looking for new objects that would capture something of the spirit of the place. I was influenced by the work of Simon Woolham who captured his experiences of different surfaces when he walked along the Kennet & Avon Canal, creating large compositions that reach the ceiling and extend out onto the floor and into the spaces of a room. I was also interested in the work of Mark Dion and the sort of forensic pieces that he produced of a certain subject, thinking about making prints from the rubbings of ink spills on the floor that I was interested in earlier as well various machinery, as part of this notional large composition.
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Frottage Bottle Sculpture and Paper Sculpture sketchbook Notes
I broadened my research concerning tools and our relationship with them. I got inspired by "The Thinking Hand”, which talks about the unique relationship human beings have with tools and how tool use is a “way of mapping out the world”. Moreover, tools are like an extension of the hand and express an embodied haptic experience when we use them. The rubbings I took of the tools and various parts of the press I found to be satisfying and relatable to the audience. All the little grooves and marks on the spanner and press machinery that I discovered by repeated, slow and methodical rubbing spoke of a sensitive physical record of human creative activity over time. The endurance and physical engagement with the work speaks of strong emotional connection with the object through the haptic experience of touch. They reflect on the connection with the life of artists and me as an artist who engages in etching, the history of creative spaces and with lived experience.
Doing subsequent research, I realised that the tools that I rubbed were in fact used for changing the pressure on the press. I felt a connection with space and the different objects that give meaning to it. I came across Jim Dine’s etchings of tools at around this time and thought more about how my tool rubbings could be more expressive like the tool-like characters he was fascinated by. I considered the relatedness of how tools and machinery are symbolic of work and effort and how that ties in with my own methodology in which rubbings are really and truly a physical ordeal to bring to creation.
Focusing On the Print Press
I began having a renewed interest in rubbing the printing press as I saw this interconnectedness of the tools and their machinery and began to focus more on it. I also wanted to try and attempt something more ambitious and on a larger scale. This, combined with a group crit and discussion with my peers, who encouraged and inspired me, got me really excited about taking rubbings of the press and focusing on this highly complex object. I began by taking rubbings of a section of the biggest press, hoping to make some large rubbings.
Rubbings, the Press and Works in Progress
My intention for the work was to make a connection with this machine, through the experience of engaging bodily with it. The idea was to map out the experience of discovering this object, in a haptic embodied way. Through the act of rubbing its surfaces I intended to create a flattened out, opened out machine. I really wanted to deconstruct it and unpack it, systematically getting inside it, getting to know every part of it down to its nuts and bolts. Almost like a forensic examination I hoped to depict it from all four angles so I could fully understand it as an object and ask myself what it is about old printing presses that fascinate me so much. It is something I can’t seem to fully answer through other means of expression.
The Deconstructed Big Press
This almost obsessional desire to get to know and discover the world through drawing and imprintment will perhaps provide a kind of complete abstract experience of the printing press. I feel the machine is almost being brought to life and becomes its own entity by sharing this embodied experience with the viewer. By taking this concept to its absurd limits, and presenting this encounter to the audience, there forms an ironic perversity to the whole process. The printing press has historically revolutionised information technology, spreading knowledge far and wide. The printing press could be said to symbolise knowledge and its dissemination. Deconstructing the press in this manner, with one of the oldest forms of print making methods, has in a sense turned the press itself into knowledge. The printing press has itself been pressed, almost like its printing itself. It is as if the press, splayed out on the walls or on the floor, is experiencing itself and acknowledging what it does by making these prints of itself.
In terms of how I approached my materials and the processes I used for the work, I was asking myself what the most effective way to lend these frottages the most authenticity and relatability. I was strongly influenced by the work of Anna Barriball, whose textural engagement and durational process made her frottages really transfix the eye and grab the attention of the viewer. I considered and experimented with various papers including dressmakers' paper, copier paper and an assortment of Japanese Kozo papers, but I eventually settled on Scritta, or bible paper, which has a wonderful receptivity and delicacy as well as a rich historical precedent for recording the past. I have experimented with, and considered various papers, but I also considered what tool I wanted to use for my rubbings. I attempted to use charcoal and charcoal pencil to see how much detail and subtlety it added to the process. In the end charcoal pencil was very difficult to get a sharp point, as it continually needed sharpening, that could really dig into the various peaks and troughs I was looking for to get an authentic representation of that object. I also felt it was too soft and the point often broke off. I experimented with various grades of softness of graphite pencil and various kinds of graphite pencils, ranging from hard to very dark and graphite sticks to woodless graphite pencils.
I found that in most cases that although the less sharp-pointed drawing materials were quicker and filled the tooth of the paper faster, it lacked that precision and subtle effects that a simple, soft 8b pencil could provide. I also found that putting the pencil too horizontal was also detrimental to preserve exactly those delicate markings of wear and tear that give character to the frottages. Indeed, Anna Bariball talks in her work about the need for a sharp pencil point, carving into the surface to really get at every indentation and mark. I also tested out going in various directions pencil to see which would work best. Going in a singular direction did seem to mostly provide the best results. Something Bariball was also keen on doing. I started to think about how I could get the best rubbings and bring forth the best qualities that I wanted in the work, which was detailed and very solid coverage of medium. Unlike Barriball, I liked the idea of the work fading away in places, gently going over to white. I wanted to bring across this idea of them being like apparitions, ghostly images that emphasize the passing of time, age decay.
I created rubbing plans for my tools and machine objects and did repetitions of the same work in order to arrive at the ones I liked best. Taking inspiration from Max Ernst, I would then go back into the images with a putty rubber and a pencil and create the subtlest of highlights and enhance certain features. I was keen on giving a sense of life and realism to the tools and machinery I was engaged with by doing this. Bringing back marks that didn’t quite transfer as well as I had hoped. I used a bone folder and the back of my nail to burnish out some of the crinkles that were taking away from the message of the work.
Big Press Sketches and Plan
Unlike in Unit 1, I feel these print frottages have more of a narrative to them, expressing an emotional engagement with the space and its environment that is more self-reflective around this embodied experience. It hopefully reveals a real love for machinery, especially printing technology and etching in general. It has been described as almost a fetishistic narrative with the press, as if it is a kind of love object that I am engaging with an intimate relationship. Certainly, the dedication and time spent devoted to the surfaces of these printing objects borders on a real ordeal and test of endurance that I hope cannot but engender a feeling of passion for my subject. Do Ho Suh’s play on the word rubbing meaning loving in Korean feels most apt here, as an example of the narrative of love, passion and dedication to a thing that I hope I also share with his work.
In the run up to the dialogues show, I started to realise the space limitations involved in presenting the larger press and impracticalities of presenting such a large volume of work in a smaller space. I was asking myself where this collection of frottages can exist; should they be on the walls; propped up against something; hanging in the ceiling in some way or presented on the floor like a map. After carefully thinking more about presenting my work, I decided to scale down and began making rubbings of the smaller intaglio press in order to make presenting the work more manageable for future showcasing. (talk about liv preston/mujeeb in professional section. See professional skills section). I hope to present the collection of rubbings as a holistic unit that shows an opened-up machine.
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Small Press Sketches and Plans
It was around this time that I had some insightful tutorials. After discussing my choice of paper with Kate, I became much more fascinated with the idea of surface and its intrinsic qualities. I considered in more detail how bible paper is quite possibly the most famous historic paper for recording and commemorating information about the past. It is designed to hold a great deal of information and is famous for its relationship with the printing press, allowing the mass production of information to become available for ordinary people. It clearly has a strong history of tracing back images, words and ideas from the past. It also quite poignant that it has lost its significance in recent history; something that mirrors the printing press’s own position, becoming a niche and an ever-rarer analogue artifact of the past.
Bible Paper
It feels as if the careful tracing and recording of this antiquated and aging machine, slowly but surely dying out in the world at large, is bringing it and the past back to life and highlighting their worth as beloved art producing objects. The rubbing of these objects acts as a way for me to resolve the question I am asking myself about what it is that I find so appealing about them. It is the expression of feelings that I cannot understand other than by exploring them through this haptic experience. It was also at this time I became aware of and interested in the studio and its place in art and theory. I researched further into how creative and studios spaces are becoming under increasing threat with smaller and smaller spaces for artists to live and work and how this correlates with the idea of recording the traces of the past and my interest in making spaces. (See Extended Research on ‘Whitechapel Gallery, A century of the Artist’s Studio’ ).
In addition, Kate helped me to reconsider the question of composition more. It seemed best to give more space to the rubbings to allow them to breath and centre them better in the middle of the paper. She also introduced me to Toba Khedori, an Iranian artist, who creates drawings of ordinary things on a very large scale with sheets of paper. Her work contains personal traces of the artist such as a shoe print or her own hair from the floor. These ghostly touches of presence have a great deal of resonance with my own work, with each fingerprint, drop of sweat or wayward gestural line conveying the experience of making and getting to know. I came to embrace these various personal traces as part of the drawing, and part of the character of its making.
The tutorial with Mujeeb made me think more broadly about the history of print making and printing machines. I endeavored to enrich my knowledge about its history and enliven my understanding of the machines themselves. (See Relevant Contextual Research). The tutorial also addressed how I might contextualise rubbing and the broader history of touch, and how it has affected us as humans. I wanted to understand how these issues might inform the direction of my work and really the importance of subjects I chose to engage with.
Moreover, he illuminated my thinking about the time spent in this ordeal of making painstaking rubbings and how from the perspective of the audience this was part of the interest of the work. The obsessive, strenuous labour of making the object is part of what gives it value and success as a work of art. Indeed, In a Companion to Contemporary Drawing, they remark on the “willing embrace of painstaking drawing” in contemporary drawing practice and a great proclivity for “labour-intensive drawing"3. The discomfort of sitting, bending, stooping, kneeling, lying on the floor, and long hours of mental and physical toil is part of the emotional appeal and greater story of the work.
The tutor also helped me to reflect further on the ironic ‘perversity’ of rubbing such a progenitor of prints, and this made me think more about the paper that I was using and how this paper, which is used most famously to create sacred texts, is also rather ironically and perversely being utilized. I was influenced by Paul Noble who in, De-figuring the body with Paul Noble, Chloe Piene & Aura Satz, talked about how drawing over and over the paper’s surface produces cracks, bruises and dirties the paper. In my case, the pure white paper’s function has been subverted from that of the more conventional conveyor of sacred knowledge to that which has a more perverse irony. Perhaps there is always just a primal urge to deface the pure whiteness of paper; to burnish and break its surface. It was interesting to hear Noble had produced a work called ‘Dirty Book’, that was a collection of all his old and used foolscap paper for guarding his drawings and his hands. He found value in preserving “drawings waste” which resonates with my own thinking of finding value in the traces of remnants. Catherine Anyango Grünewald also mentioned how “paper is strong but fragile” which touches on the delicate fragility of the rubbings and the power of their subject matter, this effect compounded by the rarity of such iconic printing machines and how they are also vulnerable, archaic objects in decline, in the world at large.
PRINTING PRESS VIDEO PROJECT: WINDING THE WHEEL
I was excited in the midst of this printing press project to experiment with new media and felt inspired by the idea of collaboration with other artists. I therefore made a video performance piece about the printing press that focused on the common themes of the project. The idea was to place a piece of paper in the press and turn it in the roller repeatedly. The act of repetition was to draw focus to the repetitive act of making and the difficulties inherent in it. It was to depict this experience of the print room from the point of view of engaging with the press.
The Wheel, video, Duration: 2.35 mins, 2022
I hoped to create a video in which the paper was larger, rounder and more prominent but the work in a way lent more towards myself as the performer and the machine itself. The physical toil of endlessly turning the wheel was emphasised and this was an attempt to allude to the arduous process of producing this experience through rubbings. It also spoke to the physicality of the methods used to engage with the subject, rubbing being a labour-intensive process. The frenetic pace of turning the wheel attempted to highlight the endurance and obsessive engagement I have with the printing press. The movement of the press in the video shows an animus that is birthed from my intervention with the object and the space. After I leave the performance the press now “exists” in a way that it did not before. It has almost taken over the performance as the protagonist itself. I feel this is especially true of the ending as the machine is almost alive by itself. In addition, the concluding segment gives a sense that even the machine is tired after the exertions undertaken.
In terms of the video editing, I originally thought that the video might well be silent. I knew it would be in black and white, but I did not consider the impact of the audio to the overall effect of the piece. After looking back over the imagery and the audio I made in case it would be useful, we thought that placing the audio out of sync, apart from the 40-57th second would emphasise the “voice of the press”. I felt the ghostly, haunting noises of the machine coming to life would give new power to the imagery. The cranking noises were emphasised, and the audio was sped up, so it reached a crescendo as it were. We used cross fade to mix the audio and transition it and inserts to generate movement and reaction shots in post-production. It was enjoyable to use a different media to tell the same story and it is maybe something I might try to do develop further in the future.
RUBBING IN THE STUDIO, THE SCHOOL AND THE GREATER WORLD AT LARGE
Crack
When I was not working in the print room, I looked around at things in my studio that piqued my interest. I was looking for my own narrative in this intriguing space, at the time particularly influenced by the rubbings of Anna Barriball. I looked for a long time at many different primary source materials and settled on an enormous crack in the wall and ceiling of my studio.
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The Making of Crack
I was particularly drawn to the crack as it seemed to have this understated power as a very large void space(susan collis). I asked myself, what is a crack? A crack is a line on a surface which has split without breaking. It is an opening, that presents the audience with the opportunity to delve deeper, to get below the surface of something and think about what lies hidden beneath. A tension exists between this idea of an opening or even breaking through, but never quite ever being able to do so. The work makes you almost feel you can get behind or beneath the work, but the rendering always leaves you feeling it is a solid surface that you cannot. I am interested in this notion of a deeper history of surface, like you are coming to understand something more wide-reaching and important, a window into something more important than just the surface deep. I am trying to consider what exactly is that feeling for developing my research question.
TRAPDOOR
I Looked around for other things in the school that really captured my imagination, and I came across a series of what looked like trapdoors in the college. The idea of a trapdoor, used originally to mill sacks of grain, felt like a fertile germ of an idea. In fiction it was often used to demarcate secrete passageways, tunnels or hidden doors. They put forth this idea that the college has this whole hidden architecture. These now long obsolete relics have the potential to lead you into another world ripe with possibility. It’s this sense of possibility, or expectation that perhaps allows the audience to create more complex narrative that is one key component to the work. At this time, I was particularly interested in Liv preston’s talk about working with the architecture of a space. The way in which she lifted the flooring of her studio, exploring underneath the RA’s foundations and revealing what history lies beneath, was very inspiring to me.
The clear obsolescence and relic quality is an important aspect of my fascination with the work. It feels like a mystery, at least to me, about what these small doors in the corridors were used for. Showing this kind of historic decay; which has a kind of subtle pathetic quality to such old and rare things is part of the appeal of bringing back these historic traces into the world.
I experimented many materials on the canvas to see which would work best with this new medium.
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Trap Door Test Piece and Playing with Presentation
I settle with an extremely a dark pencil, a favourite of mine the General’s 9xxB, which is the darkest graphite and carbon pencil in the world. It created truly velvety deep images that made an interesting change from lighter, shinier graphite. It allows the work to be displayed say against a window which would be more difficult with other media. It overall gave a great depth to the rubbing which hopefully will enhance the experience of sharing these traces of archaic presence with the audience.
I enjoyed attempting to present my work in different ways in a white cube space, and I found the haptic qualities inherent in canvas to be quite delightful. There is something perhaps lost from the incredibly receptive surface that bible paper brings however.
I enjoyed attempting to present my work in different ways in a white cube space, and I found the haptic qualities inherent in canvas to be quite delightful. There is something perhaps lost from the incredibly receptive surface that bible paper brings however.
INK CASTING
Print Room Workshop Surface
My continued affection for the print room led me to look for other surfaces or objects that I might make my own and somehow show this passion to the world. I became completely enamoured with the surface of the workshop top designated for wiping and cleaning the plates. It felt like a found drawing, created by the attritional marks made in collaboration by me and by every student who has used the print room for over 50 years or more. I remembered a talk given by Finlay Taylor, who made a work called ‘snail drawings’, in which garden molluscs slowly but surely ate paper to produce a drawing. I felt this was similar in an odd way to this concept of an ‘attritional drawing’ that I was thinking about. I attempted to take rubbings of the surface and unfortunately nothing of the surface came through onto the paper. I asked the technician about how I might capture the marks on the surface, and he suggested to me to create an ink casting in plaster of Paris. I decided to try it out and carefully hand wiped the surface with ink, this to me feeling like a mimicry of the rubbing process. I used strong cardboard and made a rectangle. I then sealed this down with taped and with the help of the technician poured plaster of Paris onto the inked surface and waited for it to dry overnight. The results were highly encouraging and the surface and its marks that had got me so excited seemed to come through in tantalising detail. If I could add a little less plate oil and wipe the surface with a bit more refinement it seemed possible to go much more boldly and with greater scale. I wanted to do the surface in the actual print room in situ. But that was simply not possible given it is a functioning part of the room and in constant use. I got very lucky in that a large piece of Formica from the print room just so happened to be being thrown out at this time and it was nearly the same surface and used for the same function.
Casts, experiments and outcomes
After cleaning it up I took it to the wood workshop and had the technician cut off the more dangerous sharp edges with a wall saw. I then experimented with great deal, attempting to learn and perfect the art of casting on top this inked surface, for which I had no prior experience. I went to casting workshops to learn how to pour plaster and Jesmonite correctly, as well as how to reinforce my casts. I specially cut inked surfaces that were the leftovers from the edges of the Formica tabletop to the sizes of an A3 etching plate. I nailed down the surfaces onto a piece of MDF board and created a wooden rectangle to stop the plaster from seeping out of the edges. I took many casts perfecting the process. In the end I found that plaster, so far, has taken to the inked surfaces a lot better than the jesmonite. I eventually managed to get some pleasing results where the casts are nearly as perfect as one can aspire to in an imperfect process.
The casts incorporate etching, rubbing and imprintment in a way that felt like it really intersects with all my interests. I was reminded of a Rachel Whiteread work and how “life from which it [the thing] was cast, reads legibly on the works outer skin, with its mottled imperfections and the occasional air bubble” and it too was like a kind of print of a drawing of the life of human activity. I felt that these cast presented the expanded field of drawing, and talked about the interrelatedness of drawing and sculpture, especially when thinking that all drawings are in a way sculptural. When you dig tiny valleys into the paper with your chosen medium that is like a tiny relief sculpture. This is especially true of rubbings in which the surface of the paper is much more indented. I feel it’s a work where drawing, printmaking and sculpture converge in a very exciting way that I’m just coming to figure out.
I plan to create a half or full-sized cast of the worktops’ surface for the show in July. I will place it either on the floor, propped up by a wooden rectangle, at a comfortable height to be viewed or hung on the wall of the gallery. I feel there is a certain aptness in having it on the floor, echoing its original function.
Foot Notes
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Chorpening, K. and Fortnum, R. (2020). A companion to contemporary drawing. Hoboken, Nj Wiley-Blackwell.