Rhythm in Research by Rachel Duckhouse

Rachel Duckhouse is a Glasgow based artist working in a range of media including drawing and printmaking. The complex patterns and systems in nature, human behaviour and the built environment form the basis of her practice.

She makes responsive, research based work that reveals hidden patterns in specific contexts. She uses the physical processes of drawing and printmaking to investigate relationships and flows of energy within real or imagined spaces and situations.



‘Rhythm in Research’ presents screenprints, etchings, lithographs and drawings created in response to several artist residencies and self-directed research projects she’s recently undertaken in Scotland and Canada.



As artist in residence for Watershed+ in Calgary, she worked with City of Calgary water engineers to research and develop a series of drawings and prints describing the complex flows of the Bow River through city infrastructure.



As Associate Artist at Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) she worked with gallery staff to create a series of drawings based on their complex relationships to climate change, within the context of the GoMA building.





Most recently, as part of an on-going research project ‘Multiple//Parallel’, making work based on the geology and hydrology of southeast Canada.



"I'm interested in the patterns and rules that govern the universe as we understand it, from a molecular to planetary scale. I often work in series; posing a question or exploring a concept, devising a set of parameters or rules, and testing out a series of variations on the theme. The result is a set of images that work together to pull and push an idea in different ways. To make just one image would suggest a definitive answer to a question. To make several suggests there are an infinite number of possible answers."

http://www.rachelduckhouse.co.uk

http://www.edinburghprintmakers.co.uk/exhibitions/Rhythm-in-Research-by-Rachel-Duckhouse

Lithography workshop

Today I had an introduction to aluminium lithography, a new process for me.

"Lithography, 

planographic printing process that makes use of the immiscibility of grease and water.

In the lithographic process, ink is applied to a grease-treated image on the flat printing surface; nonimage (blank) areas, which hold moisture, repel the lithographic ink. This inked surface is then printed—either directly on paper, by means of a special press (as in most fine-art printmaking), or onto a rubber cylinder (as in commercial printing)."

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/343748/lithography

I applied pencil crayons, marker pens, cut up pieces of card and cut up pieces of tracing paper onto a shape that I had torn from tracing paper.


Lithography plate prior to inking or printing

I then exposed this imagery onto the aluminium plate, and printed the plate using the offset press.


Lithography plate after inking


My first lithographs

Cutting into colour

The current exhibition, 'cutting into colour' at the bowery gallery features original lithographs by Matisse and contemporary responses by Briony Mullan, Brownwen Baynes, Garth Simmons and Phillippa Dyrlaga

henri matisse - 1869-1954

 

matisse’s later years were influenced by his physical condition. from the mid 1940’s matisse found paint difficult to manipulate because of his disability and worked from his bed or wheelchair as a result of surgery for stomach cancer. matisse developed an art practice that could be carried out sitting down: drawings, paper cutouts, and designs for larger projects. the pieces began life as sheets of precoloured paper that matisse hand cut. he then directed his assistants where to paste them on large sheets of paper.

matisse had been both a sculptor and a painter. through his paper cut-outs he applied the technique of the sculptor to the substance of painting and carved blocks of pure colour out of paper. for an issue of the french portfolio, verve, published by teriade, devoted to his later works, matisse supervised the production of lithographs after these paper cutouts. these were printed by mourlot frères, one of the main lithographic studios of paris. about half-way through the project, matisse died. the works were printed as lithographs after the paper cutouts in a special issue of verve entitled les derniers oeuvres de matisse and published in 1956. the ones that were produced before his death bear his signature in the stone; those after, lack it. the lithographic plates were erased after the edition was printed.

matisse’s works of 1952 to 1954 suggest the golden age, the extraordinary garden of earthly paradise brimming with flowers and fruits among which as myth prescribes, naked creatures wander.

http://www.thebowery.org/galleries.html