Using Joiner photography to make a screenprinted panorama
August 2008 I was in the final stages of the MA in Fine Art Printmaking at Winchester School of Art. My final show featured my biggest work to date, a 5 x 3 metre panoramic 'joiner' of Calshot Beach near Fawley Refinery in Hampshire. It was made from 18 overlapping 56 x 76cm prints printed on beautiful somerset velvet off white paper. I used silkscreen printing taken from edited photographs of Calshot to create the continuous panorama. The image, edited on photoshop was composed of literally hundreds of photos overlapped to create a mammoth photographic joiner before simplifying it to a monotone illustration which was transferred to screens one by one and printed onto paper section by section. I wanted to give a sense of both the scale and detail of this beautiful location.
The process is documented in the captions on the photos. Alongside I began to work on re-creating other visual elements of the beach in abstract and figurative ways. I tested out and managed to create successful photo etchings using blue roll on photo emulsion on shellaced cardboard - the emulsion smells so strong I wouldn’t recommend it without serious ventilation). I also used the roll on photo emulsion on metal and plastic quite successfully.
As much of my time on MA had been concerned with developing alternative etching and printing techniques I used the edges of the panorama as a way to test out all of these I used the back of second hand lithographic plates donated by a local printer as a free source of aluminium with which to explore copper sulphate etching, I used PCB iron on resist sheets and open bite etching on coke cans to represent the weather worn materials I came across. using photographs, drawings and abstracted representations of my chosen location. I was concerned with viewpoints from which you experience a coastline - looking out to see, from the sea to the land, topographically, emotionally and in detailed close up as you scour the beach for interesting finds. All of these were incorporated.
The start of my ‘found series’ of image transfers was also included in the exhibition alongside a video projection on industrial plastic sheeting draped over a wooden frame. The video was a time lapse of the beach for a three hour period taken early morning in summer, sadly we got there too late for sunrise but you can still see the shifting weather and regular assortment of boats making the crossing to and from the isle of wight and beyond.
The opportunity to have the print room pretty much to myself throughout the summer and the undivided attention of Caroline Hill, the printmaking technician extraordinaire is a great memory. I'm still enthralled by the coast as a rich seam of inspiration for my prints but this is the project that started it all.
It was displayed alongside the stop motion timelapse, a section of which can be seen above which was projected onto plastic sheeting to reflect on the amount of waste which washes up on the beach. I also completed the first of my ongoing series of ‘found’ transfer prints with graphite which were prints taken from items found along the beach. The process of documenting and transfer printing then drawing onto them turned them from discarded waste into intriguing objects worthy of contemplation. Project blog coming soon.
