Abstract
Drawn in the Margins is a body of etchings exploring concepts around liminal space and living on the periphery.I am in Transit. I live and work in numerous places and drive up and down the motorways. It’s a liminal existence. I collect imagery when on Romney Marsh that informs a visual conversation. It is a desolate, peripheral place on the far South East Coast of Britain. There is a strong connectivity between self and place. There is a familiarity. An understanding of place.
I began with drawing, often rapidly. I will make numerous visits to the same place, in different seasons, weather and light. The repetitive fieldwork enables the place to be revealed alongside a broader context for the work. The layers of complexity become a palimpsest as earlier drawings are reworked like an etching plate, redrawn on top. These initial sketches act as departure points for more complex ideas and a remapping of my journeys. These sketches are the basis for ideas and multi layered conversations about how we navigate place and space.
Once I have returned to my print studio, there is dislocation from place. I begin with a series of square plates. The square is important as this is a deliberate strategy to depart from the mimetic and representational. Familiarity as the adage goes ‘breeds contempt’ and it is my intention to draw the viewer to something other. Other than representational landscape and literal. It is now that memory and emotion are relied upon. The prints look for balance using repetition of both circles and grids within a perfect square. Printmaking is essential to the work, it is symbiotic with the idea. The etching process and materiality of Printmaking becomes a spontaneous transcription of feelings and memories, both familiar and elusive.
The results are intricate and complex multi-layered prints that resist literal interpretation and lack referential scale, honouring instead a physically charged and deeply personal mapping of the environment.
The work evolves around a discourse of conversations lost. Of people we have lost. Of conversations we never had. The things we wished we’d said. Elusive ghosts of place and deep seated memories are made present.
A more private curious, dislocation of place. A place for listening. A place of belonging. A personal cartography.
https://www.keeganarts.co.uk
I began with drawing, often rapidly. I will make numerous visits to the same place, in different seasons, weather and light. The repetitive fieldwork enables the place to be revealed alongside a broader context for the work. The layers of complexity become a palimpsest as earlier drawings are reworked like an etching plate, redrawn on top. These initial sketches act as departure points for more complex ideas and a remapping of my journeys. These sketches are the basis for ideas and multi layered conversations about how we navigate place and space.
Once I have returned to my print studio, there is dislocation from place. I begin with a series of square plates. The square is important as this is a deliberate strategy to depart from the mimetic and representational. Familiarity as the adage goes ‘breeds contempt’ and it is my intention to draw the viewer to something other. Other than representational landscape and literal. It is now that memory and emotion are relied upon. The prints look for balance using repetition of both circles and grids within a perfect square. Printmaking is essential to the work, it is symbiotic with the idea. The etching process and materiality of Printmaking becomes a spontaneous transcription of feelings and memories, both familiar and elusive.
The results are intricate and complex multi-layered prints that resist literal interpretation and lack referential scale, honouring instead a physically charged and deeply personal mapping of the environment.
The work evolves around a discourse of conversations lost. Of people we have lost. Of conversations we never had. The things we wished we’d said. Elusive ghosts of place and deep seated memories are made present.
A more private curious, dislocation of place. A place for listening. A place of belonging. A personal cartography.
https://www.keeganarts.co.uk
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Place of Publication | Arundel |
| Publisher | Gallery 57 |
| Publication status | Published - Dec 2017 |
