Wednesday 6 April 2011

Philippa Edwards


Untitled, The Beginning 
Collograph Print
2010

Artist Philippa Edwards has been working with print for the last 4 years, and in her most recent works she is exploring techniques of altering the surface of the paper, using collographs and blind embossing. In this way the texture of the line becomes an integral apart of the image. Her work also challenges the formal element of the rectangle; by carving into the plates and laying various images over each other she breaks up the geometrical regularity of the paper, and gives another dimension to the outline.

These collograph printing plates are interesting objects in their own right and have now become the artwork itself. Made by building up layers of adhesive, grouting, paper, card and shellac the texture of the lines contained within them are more apparent than the impressions they leave on the paper. Some are coloured with acrylic, others are left the natural colour of the materials. Their textural quality is enhanced by the remnants of ink left over from the printing process. Where work is displayed with the plate and the print in close proximity it can be seen that there is also a line of symmetry in the work, one being a mirror image of the other.

These works are focused on the Opium Poppy, a complicated flower that brings essential pain-killing drugs along with the dangers of addiction. In this way Philippa is reflecting on the subject of drugs and the money and power that revolve around them.  There is a duality within the work linked to the duality of the harvest, which brings medicinal benefits on one hand and damaging addiction on the other. Another reflection of opposites lies in the plant itself. Poppy flowers are delicate and transient, the seed-heads architectural and enduring. They are a metaphor for the cycle of life and the inevitability of death, and in this way they reveal a timeline to the viewer.




Double Bloom
Collograph print and blind emboss
2010





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