landscape as female image maker (print series)

physical making and the horizontal frame: i am switching over and back between research writing and physical making…. both seem to be informing each other which is always the point i suppose. the last few sessions of making continues a process that i began a few months ago, where i printed my bitmaps for screen printing on the wrong side of the transparencies so i could physically extend or spread the image’s ink beyond the parameters of the rectilinear frame – a disruption of the idealised horizontal extension of the landscape towards a picturesque idyll. through hand manipulation, this type of extension seems to have a destructive effective on the image – as if wiping out or spoiling it, yet brings an energy from the gesture.

physical making, wet processes and manipulation: i have also been researching and writing about the gendering of image making processes, where wet processes are feminised because they relate to matter of the world, touch, the body, subjectivity and an unpredictability of outcomes – in other words, all things not cerebral, uniform, rational and objective. the manipulation of image also suggests the doctoring of the image away from the objective truth implied in a snap shot moment in time. i deliberately chose to print a small edition to formulise these one off bodily gestures through this systematic printing processes.

physical making – the sessions: i decided to work in black ink only because when i attempted adding another colour it seemed to dilute the gesture of the ink across the image and the landscape image became unreadable. i tried this process in lots of ways – choosing a single landscape from various points along it on a days walking… some images of the process.

transparencies for exposure

inking up

screen print images

close ups

edition 

reflection: i think the monochrome black works in terms of keeping the gesture to the focus of the image, which would only get complicated or diluted by adding colour. of course i could complete a full colour range through to all its CMYK layers so that the colour is ‘life-like’ and therefore might not detract. i am interested in how they look close up – with all their bitmap dots in rows and the washes across them. i also wonder how the image might work at a larger scale and with larger physical and bodily gestured …. for the moment i will let this sit, but i do plan on scaling up with another series i am developing – ‘sliver’.