Rob Swainston - Printstallations
Rob Swainston - Printstallations
PLEXUS (2011), woodblock print on paper with mirrors.
In Front of Behind the Wall, (2011), woodblock print on paper.
Zimmer Frei, (2012), woodblock print on fabric with wood and wire.
Rob Swainston reminds us we are not just consumers of icons, but producers and observers of images. All images are historically negotiated assemblages between humans, machines, materials, and social structures. In a society where social knowledge and power have become pure image, the print technologies historically central to this transformation can act as double-agent. Artists working in print media can be chameleons moving between image makers and image reproducers. Image reproducers are technocrats, proto-machines, and images-smiths in building the spectacle world order. In their perfection they ask no questions. Artists are image makers showing an image constructed, built, repeated, overprinted, coded, decoded, and endlessly negotiated. For the printmaker, the press bed is not a window of illusion, it is the space of social tinkering. The artist is a hacker. Rob Swainston performs this hack through two interrelated bodies of work—series of unique multiples and printstallations. Installations such as ‘A New System Every Monday’ and ‘All that is Solid Melts into Air’ mix print media, sculpture, painting, drawing and video to point out architectural, institutional, historical, and social spaces. Series of standardized works such as ‘Who Owns the Sky?’ and ‘Propositions’ move between representation and abstraction such that neither of these categories are important. The viewer participates in an “archeology of uncovering”, discerning numerous processes and images containing multiplicities of narratives culminating in an uncovering of the “significant image” and the realization “I see myself seeing myself.”
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Pablo Rasgado
Within Pablo Rasgado’s Work, the surfaces of the walls often are the detonators of his research, which are revealed as evidence of complex situations that lie underneath them, and by doing so, they highlight features of the site that usually remain invisible. His interventions in urban spaces draw their conclusions, by the information gathered though the study of the accumulated social experience within an architectural setting. They try to place the attention towards an inquiry about history, function and form by questioning the relationship between function and design within specific contexts; the analysis of urban change and its cultural value; and the potential of inactive spaces within cities.
Pablo Rasgado, Mural , 2019, Construction materials from the demolition of a house, 244 x 760 cm.
Pablo Rasgado’s work transforms ordinary materials from public and institutional spaces into compelling abstract compositions. By reappropriating fragments of painted walls—whether from city streets or temporary museum installations—he captures layers of visual and social history embedded in these surfaces. His approach preserves the essence of a moment, frozen in time, yet recontextualized. Rasgado’s Unfolded Architecture series, for instance, abstracts specific moments in museum and art history, echoing a conceptual homage to Mexican muralism. Rather than illustrating historical scenes, Rasgado utilizes fragments of everyday walls, rich with contextual layers, to create abstractions that resonate with historical depth. Through this innovative reuse of space’s “background” materials, Rasgado forges a direct connection to Mexico’s artistic past, infusing his work with the physical residue of lived experiences and cultural narratives.
Pablo Rasgado, When the symbols shatter, 2019, Structure in wood, light, and acrylic, 144 x 62 x 14 in., 366 x 158 x 36 cm.
Pablo Rasgado, Ventana, 2019, Bricks, 52 x 66 in., 133 x 168 cm.
The Perfect Home II Made from translucent nylon fabric and meticulously hand-sewn, ‘the perfect home II’ continues the artist’s study of mass global migration, the process of finding a home, and the notion of permanence. the installation reflects upon do ho suh’s own history of migration and displacement — born in seoul and immigrating to the US in his twenties — and centers on the idea of personal and cultural identity.
for him, in re-creating his former homes, the artist resurrects the memories of living within them, and emphasizes the connection people have to physical spaces. visitors to the brooklyn museum are able to walk through the work, inhabiting — even if temporarily — the apartment and the artist’s memories.
the installation reflects on the artist’s sense of impermanence
Deirdre Frost
Áitreabh 2021, oil and acrylic on birch panels attached together with lift-off hinges, approx. 350 x 300 cm.
Baile 2021, Oil on board, 80 cm x 120 cm.
Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread House 1993
House was only ever intended to be a temporary monument, and its ultimate disappearance will be an act of completion. That this stack of sealed rooms, perched one upon another should itself be turned into a memory seems fitting. It is an idea which, for a protracted moment, enters the world of things, and then is gone. ‘House’, she said, ‘is to do with memory and ultimately it will become just that.’ 'House makes a point about the smallness and fragility of the spaces we actually live in, worry about, decorate....all those things that are part of life.’ An essentially hidden, private space has, by an act of inversion, become a physical, public expression. What, finally, has been exposed is an empty setting, a place where people once led a life of intimacies, grew up, grew old and died. And, one might add, fucked, rowed, worried, slept, ate, shat, fought, laughed and lied. No one looks out of the windows any more, no one puts out the milk bottles on the stoop; no one shouts ‘Kevin comein you tea’s ready’ or returns home late from the pub and fumbles with the keys to the lock: no one, not even Rachel, lives here any more. House is a dead space.
Rachel Whiteread, Study for House, 1992
Losel Yauch
Yauch focuses on sheer materials and the shape of light as a visual tool to communicate the feeling of loss and examine the presence of absence, fragility of form, and on a broader scale, the concept of grief. Her paintings articulate subtle yet considered distinctions between the intangible and the out of reach.
Emma Parker
“My work explores the darker and often hidden aspects of being human: fear, shame, abandonment, despair and the broken – with an occasional twist of humour added for sanity. I use discarded and worn materials in my work and see the act of making with them as a process of transformation and salvaging of the broken self."
“The use of thread and stitch helps me make connections and piece the broken together whilst the repetitive nature of hand sewing is a soothing rhythm, which nurtures and helps mend. In my work I often include fragments of narratives or imagery that may tell only part of a story, leaving it up to the viewer to find their own ending.”
Marlene MacCallum - Book Works
Recording my visible environment and ordinary occurrences of daily life has been the persistent pursuit of my practice. I am fascinated by our relationship with the spaces that frame and objects that fill most daily lives, and yet, are overlooked as we move through our routines in a state of inattentional blindness.
Do Not Enter, partially expanded view, 18 × 23 × 80 cm (extended), 1998. This is a tunnel book that leads you through contradictory experiences of a text which attempts to deny entrance and images that beckon by offering passageways. It obliquely refers to the absurdity of attempting to define territory.
Obvert, hand bound bookwork with accordion structure, photogravure and letterpress, 28.5 × 21 × 1 cm (closed) and 43 × 140 cm (expanded), 1997.
In this work, I am exploring how the ordinary can so easily become the extraordinary. Initially, the images and text describe a childhood memory of interior space inverting but then as one moves through the book and closer to the spaces, the shift between normal and odd occurs via representations of tactile sensations.
Details of pink story: sinistral, opening the book work and fully opened view, 96 × 122 cm (expanded size), 2004—05.
This two-volume collaborative work with Barb Hunt brings together two seemingly contradictory representations of a woman's life. pink story: dextral is an artificially constructed narrative of a stereotypical woman's life. Paint chips offer the promise of covering flaws, and the paint surface creates a façade. In contrast to this external perspective, pink story: sinistral presents an internalized story; constructed of photographs that represent spaces metaphoric of key stages in a woman's life. The use of the tile format in both volumes links the pieces together formally, and the visual narratives become mosaics. The result is two volumes that are like mirror images, reflecting each other, and offering to the viewer a paradoxical reality.
Townsite House, 25.3 × 25.3 cm (page size), 2006. The Townsite House Project is a two-part body of work consisting of a series of 34 toned, fibre-based silver gelatin prints and a book work. The project was inspired by the experience in living in Corner Brook’s Townsite area. Four models of homes were built in the 1920-30’s by the pulp and paper mill for their management and skilled labour. I photographed in five homes – all the same model as the one I live in. I wanted to provide a reading experience that would give the visual equivalence of the uncanny experience of being in homes that are the same/not the same as mine. The book work makes use of a mediated process of representation. Using photogravure, film transparencies, screenprinting and letterpress, the hand bound book work layers and mirrors images and text to echo the architectural palimpsest. The videos of the maquettes provide information on the evolution of the structure and content of the book work.
Glaze: Reveal:, 21 × 42 cm, 2013.
Glaze: Reveal and Veiled is one of a series of book works inspired by the experience of living in Corner Brook’s Townsite area on the west coast of the island of Newfoundland. Between 1924-34 the pulp mill built 150 homes to house the mill management and skilled labourers. Over a period of 10 years, I have photographed in several homes, all the same model as the one I live in. These homes vary in condition from close to original in design and décor to highly renovated. This project gave me the rare opportunity to record the evolution of interior aspects of these homes. It has been the context to explore the paradoxical phenomena of conformity and individualization that occurs in a company town. Having grown up in a suburban housing development, my earliest memories of home is that of living in a space that is reminiscent of my neighbors’. Each artist’s book explores a distinct facet of image memory, multiplicity, sequence and offers the viewer a visual equivalence of the uncanny. Glaze: Reveal and Veiled presents 24 images of Townsite windows grouped into two distinct sequences. The structure is a dos à dos and each side offers a different visual metaphor for memory. The closed book is contained within a wrapper and the viewer has the option of choosing which side to enter first. Each begins similarly with endpapers made from scans of window curtains followed by line drawings of the window frames as the graphic for the title pages. Moving into Glaze: Reveal, the viewer is presented with a spread consisting of a blank white space on the verso and dense black on the recto. Turning the page, the next spread presents an image of a window on the verso and a dense black field on the recto with a glimmer of light appearing. As the viewer continues to move through the pages, each spread reveals a new window image that has been visually peeled away from the densely layered recto. The layering slowly becomes visible revealing the final presentation of single images. In contrast, moving into Glaze: Veiled the viewer begins with a window image that is layered with the previous title page line drawing. In the next spread, the same window is presented alone on the verso. The recto side layers the previous images as well as introducing the upcoming image. The viewer experiences a visual déjà vu each time the pages turn. The progress through the work results in ever more layered and veiled images.
Glaze: Veiled: , 21 × 42 cm, 2013
Ghost Estates
Shannon Valley, Co. Roscommon, Ireland.
There are 38 houses in the estate; 23 are unoccupied and in various states of disrepair and dereliction.
A single street light standing in a neighbouring, fenced field is all that remains of the final phase of 20 houses that were demolished in 2014 with a “special resolution fund” of €250,000 from the Government.
There were things built that should not have been built
Lorcan Sirr, lecturer in housing studies at Dublin Institute of Technology suggests a novel use for some estates as a lesson to “evidence-free policy” pursued by government during the boom times: “Maybe it is no harm to leave one or two standing as a reminder of what not to do.
Boherbue, Co Cork.
Lios na Gréine in Lismire, Co Cork.
Frank Poor
When he first began crafting his multimedia works, artist Frank Poor drew inspiration from his childhood home, using old photos as a foundation for his delicate basswood sculptures. Now, the Rhode Islander takes his cues from other buildings he photographs—often abandoned ones, which invite onlookers to wonder about the people who once lived in them. Such was the premise for Locust. “I’m drawn to it somehow,” he says, adding that it reminds him of the Georgia farmhouses he grew up around. For this work, Poor sketched the house’s basic structure, then cut pieces of basswood to build its frame. After gluing the pieces together, Poor hung the resulting sculpture against the photograph, which he’d altered to exclude the building’s framework. “I’m removing the 2D house and replacing it with a 3D version,” he explains. Poor likens the house in the original photo to a cicada shell: The building is an “encasement that has been emptied,” he says. “Life has left it, but it has left its impression.”
House - Gowensville, SC, 2021, basswood, Baltic birch plywood and inkjet print, 96” x 36” x 26”
Windows – Elk Creek, VA, 2024, glass, digital transparencies and wood, 32” x 47” x 2”
House – Meridian, MS, 2020, basswood and inkjet print on rice paper, 16” x 34.75” x 9.5”
He is motivated by nostalgia and his architectural sculptures evoke the concepts of place, time and memory. His work tries to hold in one place what is there and what is gone and missing.
