Repetition, Counterpoint linocut A/P (Crash Ensemble Series)

Title: “Repetition, Counterpoint”
Medium: Linocut
Dimensions: 72 x 51cm (linocut image: 29.7 x 21cm)

***Exhibited at National Concert Hall, Dublin, Kilkenny Arts Festival, Kilkenny; New Music Dublin, Dublin; Sounds From A Safe Harbour, Cork.***

Description: I had been wishing to use sheet music and basic music notation for the basis of a screen print but struggled to find a way to do so. Meanwhile, I was trying to come up with something that could be repeated many times. I like how starkness of the black and white alludes a little to a page of sheet music, while the hand-carved bands of lines correlate to the imperfect nature of hand-drawn marks.
The image itself is made from a single A4-sized linocut. To keep the repeating lines as man-made as possible, I created a quick grid of the repeating lines (the gaps being the same height). Placing this grid on a lightbox, I drew each line by hand and scanned this in. I printed the scan on to a thin sheet of copy paper and transferred this to a lino block (via carbon transfer paper). The lino block was then carved. The central area of the image is reversed: the white lines become black and black lines become white, so positive and negative areas reverse to represent the notion of the counterpoint.

Part of a print series for Crash Ensemble’s 25th anniversary weekend at National Concert Hall, Dublin during December 2022, and exhibited throughout 2023.