Preview
Creation Date
2009
Type
image
Description
Wallpaper (detail) - Relief print on paper 2009
Jacky Redgate
“Of paper there are divers sorts, finer and coarser, as also brown and blue paper, with diverse designs that are printed for the hanging of rooms; truly they are very pretty, and make houses of the more ordinary people look neat.” (1)
I have been keeping five discarded rubber wallpaper rollers used to transfer ink to paper. They were purchased in a Sydney second hand shop in 1993. The detail is cut out of the roller leaving the raised pattern on the surface in relief. The design is reminiscent of the simple decorative patterns that lined the rooms of my childhood terraced home in London in the 1950s.
I am interested in the cylindrical form, which can be rolled, but not folded or bent. I have printed in brown ink directly from the cylinders onto single sheet rives BFK art paper. They are hand rolled one rotation, rather than repeated and the registration marks are visible on either side of the printed image.
Blair French has recently commented “Redgate’s practice has been claimed as emblematic of a postmodernist approach to art production and more recently as indicative of a resurgent artistic fascination with the forms and principles of Modernism. However, such apparent shifts in the contextualization of Redgate’s practice indicate changes in the general cultural and intellectual climate as much as in her work itself, which has remained constant to certain core interests, approaches and principles.” This includes a longstanding interest in perceptual and geometric systems, spatial relationships, codes of representation and themes of memory and recollection, which I explore across a range of media and registers.
(1) John Houghton, A Collection for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade (1669)
Rights
Copyright Jacky Redgate.