The drawn serigraph: An investigation through portraiture
This is a practice doctoral research project that seeks to evaluate the interrelationships between digital photography, analogue drawn marks, silkscreen printmaking and serigraphy that interrogate the boundaries of materiality within the context of contemporary portraiture.
In a pre-digital age, Susan Sontag wrote: ‘Photography has become one of the principal devices for experiencing something, for giving an appearance of participation”. (Sontag,1977:135) This was an analogue environment where consumerist photography was in its populist infancy with photographic negatives posted to Kodak for processing and prints physically returned to the photographer for viewing and sharing.
In the twenty-first century the instantaneity of digital camera technologies and channels of social media has produced a tsunami of images of human beings made and shared in an instant global environment. Participation, intrusion, ownership, representation, ethical collaboration between participants and producers alike is even more complex than in the analogue 1970s. It is in this context that this research investigates questions of contemporary portraiture.
The research is a three-stage process that originates with smart phone photographs which recognises the rise in smartphone ownership and the dominance of the ‘selfie’. However, such devices have greater photographic potentiality which is explored through this research. The immediacy of smartphone photography affords the user greater accessibility due to the processing speed of such digital devices. Therefore ‘fast’ photography is a key potential attribute afforded by smartphones that is underutilised in the context of contemporary smartphone photography. Within this research some portraits begin with candid photographs of individuals using a smartphone device without the knowledge of the subject.
Candid practice research methodologies are well established and as such are common practice across the fine arts: Sophie Calle, Suite Vénitienne; Walker Evans, Many are called; Teju Cole, Blind Spot; Vito Acconci, Following Piece. Specifically, this research rejects the posed, common ‘selfie’ style image when the subject looks directly at the camera instead exploring its contextual potentiality within the genre of candid photography following the work of artists such as Nan Goldin, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency and Richard Billingham, Ray’s a Laugh.
This approach enables a more ‘natural’ image to be used to explore the nature of contemporary portraiture. The three-stage research process begins with the original digital photograph which is further developed through a drawn material investigation in Serigraphic printmaking that primarily examines its replication through silkscreen print methodologies.
Finally, the completed portrait is offered to the subject, at which point s/he can withdraw fully or partially (explained in more detail later) from the process and all documentation associated with their image is destroyed. The research will bring new knowledge to the discourses of fine art, photography and printmaking.
It will seek to understand how each discourse influences and informs each other in the domain of contemporary portraiture. New knowledge will be gained in the retention of original draughtsmanship in process of silk-screen printmaking; in the artistic and ethical implications surrounding the use of smart phone digital images for fine art portraiture.
LIVING RESEARCH: THE URGENCY OF THE ARTS NAFAE RESEARCH STUDENT CONFERENCE 2019 Being vulnerable to the making, in the making.
Photography and Lived Experience Symposium in June at University of Huddersfield, School of Art, Design and Architecture. Consenting Adults – Portraiture and Discreet Photography Solo Exhibitions: 2017 High Sheriff Portraits - Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery Group Exhibitions: 2018 ‘Swarmei’ Ort Gallery. Diverso Encuentros, IMPACT 10, Santander, Spain RBSA Print; ‘Home’ OPW Gallery You and I are discontinuous beings, Co-curator. Birmingham, UK 2016 West Midlands Open BMAG. SALON at Waterhall; Pulpa Print; 20x20 Hot Bed Press; RBSA print, photography and portraits exhibitions. 1976/82 Various Exhibitions inc ICA New Contemporaries, Midland Group Nottingham, Robert Self Gallery, Artist Books, Boulder Colorado
