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Featured Artist - Dawn Cole |
My approach to printmaking I see as an exploration of the very nature of print; repetition, reversal, layering, transparency, opacity, texture, impression, process, presentation and display. Every idea, technique, material and means of display is carefully researched to ensure that each has a significance and relevance to the completed works. My work is inspired by the archive of my Great Aunt, Clarice Spratling, a WW1 Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) Nurse. Her archive contains a diary (written in 1915/16), notebook, containing handwritten lace patterns and remedies for ailments and photographs taken in France during WW1. |
Thought Patterns 1 |
Thought Patterns 2 |
I was intrigued by the photographs, they depicted scenes of order and calm and of relaxed people taking tea, but the words in Clarice's diary were at odds with these images and described some of the horror of life in a war time hospital. The first body of work to come from the archive, entitled Reading Between the Lines began with an exploration of lace. This initial research resulted in a series of collagraphs entitled Thought Patterns (see images 1 and 2) and provided me with valuable research in to how lace appears in 2 dimensions. I began to experiment with text from the diary to see if I could use it to create patterns that would resemble lace. The resulting lace designs were made on the computer, printed on to acetate and then used to make Solar plates which were exposed in sunlight and then printed with white ink on Somerset Black Velvet paper (see images 3 and 4). |
3. One man very, very bad, nearly navy blue in colour |
4. Wounded continually coming in |
My latest body of work entitled 'Resting Place' is a response to a trip to the war graves cemetery at Wimereux, France, where Clarice was posted. The men buried there all died in the hospitals in Wimereux and it is likely that Clarice would have nursed some of them. I reflected in the cemetery on the resemblance of the headstones (which are all lying flat) to pillows. The recognition that the last living resting place for these men was a hospital bed and that their last breath was on a pillow meant that from the start I knew I wanted to use textiles for this work and specifically pillowcases. |
5. The pillow that smells of his hair |
6. Resting place detail |
My initial research for Resting Place (supported using public funding by Arts Council England) began with using hand embroidered pillowcases, making plaster castings from them to use as printing plates. The resulting series of 50+ prints entitled 'The pillow that smells of his hair' (see image 5). Following on from this I began experimenting with the Devore technique to etch the words from Clarice's diary into the pillowcases that were then embellished with hand embroidery. (see images 6 and 7) and resulted in an installation piece that references the cemetery in France. Resting Place is being developed in to a 3 year touring project in collaboration with arts organisation Platform-7 which will see the pillowcases installed in outside locations accompanied by live performance and spoken word. |
7. Resting place |
For further information about the development of Resting Place: you can access a Blog at www.embroiderthetruth.wordpress.com There is also an essay about Dawn's work on the V&A website Website www.dawncole.co.uk |
