Wingform screen print (Crash Ensemble Series)

Title: “Wingform”
Medium: 3-colour screen print
Dimensions: 79.4 x 57.6cm
Edition: 10

Description: This screen print is based upon the album “Wingform” by Dublin-based composer and guitarist Barry O'Halpin, a body of music made when Composer in Residence with Crash, and premiered at New Music Dublin in 2021. The mosquito is used here as the main visual as symbolic of O'Halpin’s use of nature to “seek out the uncanny musicality to be found in sounds and shapes of natural phenomena”, including insect stridulations. The screen print is 3-colour (a first layer of a warm yellow prints the insect wings and antennae); the second layer is the matte black background; the third being the varnish-like transparent black of the symmetrical and centered mosquito.
Although made to represent “Wingform” specifically, I like how the screen print draws upon the notion of found sound in general and how so much inspiration awaits beneath the surface of the natural world to be uncovered.

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