Portfolio
Rubbings
Rock Rubbings
This collection of work was inspired by the notion that you can capture the history of a given object or place by creating a physical rubbing of it.
FRottage
I wanted to create a body of work that reflected the idea that by creating a physical rubbing of a place or object, you can capture a piece of history. You can create a physical link between the past and the present.
I was interested in the process of Frottage- the method of rubbing an uneven surface with materials such a pencils, graphite and chalk. This enabled you to create an exact replica of the surface and capture interesting patterns and shapes. Artists such as Max Ernst and Richard Long inspired my practice as I was able to see ways in which frottage could be manipulated to form new compositions.
Tangible
This project was designed to create tangile links between paper and the historic sites in Berlin. I was interested in capturing a piece of history onto paper. For example, the Sauchenhausen prints were taken at a concentration camp on the outskirts of Berlin. I wanted to capture a piece of the place, of the experiences through texture. Touch is an important sense to many people, no more so then blind people, but is often overlooked. Therefore, by concentrating on the interesting paterns of many textures, I was able to show how interesting some of them were. I embossed the names of the places in German to give the rubbings an authentic feel. These embossings were meant to be subtle so the emphasis is on the rubbings themselves
Surface
Inspired by my last project Berlin, I wanted to continue to work with Frottage. I was interested in the rock rubbings of Richard Long by creating my own interpretation of the coastline of Plymouth. Above, I created three etchings to look like the surface of a rock. Here I scratched, rubbed and dug into the surface of the plate. Mark making was key to this project. Creating haphazard lines, and dots to create texture enabled me to create a realistic surface. The first image was a print of an accidental leak of acid onto the plate I was making this created an interesting surface design. Fossils and rock surfaces became inspirations for this project.
Hand Embossed
Moving away from etching, I began to focus on Frottage itself, creating rubbings of Plymouth's rocks and stones. Mt Edgcumbe became a focus of the project as I often visited there to create numerous rubbings and drawings. I accompanied the rubbings with a co-ordinate, the exact location I took the rubbing. These were hand embossed and provided a subtle link between the natural world and the copy. I wanted to portray that I had captured a piece of nature, something that was present still in the world around us, a distinct link to the environment.