About the edition
Please note that this framed edition is available to order online for collection only. If you would like to discuss bespoke UK shipping, please contact onlineshop@dca.org.uk. This edition can be ordered unframed, with standard editions shipping, here.
These experimental prints were developed by artist Andrew Black in response to author Ursula K Le Guin's writing of landscapes, and what Black speaks of as ‘the complicated fantasy landscapes of the archipelago in the Earthsea series’.
Drawn from Black’s video work Revenge Fantasy, commissioned by DCA for the exhibition Seized by the Left Hand, these editions are a personal consideration of the layered complexity of the Scottish landscape, and how it is written, and overwritten, in various narratives. References to the miltarised West Coast of Scotland sit alongside inclusions of the natural landscape, from its topography to specific flora and fauna causing us to reconsider representations of nature and its hospitality, or inhospitality from different perspectives:
…[it] tries to navigate all these elements in a sensory way…the anxiety and paranoia of the industrial machinery of state violence lurking under the surface… from a queer position - a position with a different set of identifications and sympathies than of the macho, masculinised narratives of bodily endurance and wilderness attached to the leisure industry framings of Scotland's mountainous landscapes. Andrew Black
Black includes intentionally opaque layers of narrative text, developed through playful research in DCA Print Studio. The ‘armored subaquatic bodies’ of great diving beetles, an erotic drawing, a sword symbol, a branch of bog myrtle - all sit together, deliberately messy and hard-to-read:
We decided to make the image entirely by woodcut - I was excited by the intrusion of the material and how unsuited it is to making a nuanced photographic print...I like this idea of disguise - something behaving like something else - ...We spent a lot of time trying to make each print as imperfect as possible…no two will look exactly the same. Andrew Black
Each edition is uniquely embossed with plant detritus gathered by the artist and signed by Black using gestural traces of cow dung from the Isle of Skye, circumventing the traditional act of the artist’s name as signature.
| Year | 2019 - 2022 |
| Edition of | 10 |
| Media | Laser-engraved woodblock print on Somerset Satin 300gsm paper with plant detritus and cow dung from common grazings on the Isle of Skye Framed in artist’s wooden frame made with ash. |
| Dimensions | 59 x 45 x 4cm (framed) |
| Signature | Each edition is uniquely embossed with plant detritus gathered by the artist and signed by Black using gestural traces of cow dung from the Isle of Skye (numbered and dated on verso) |
About Andrew Black
Andrew Black is an artist, born in 1990 in Leeds. He has lived and worked in Glasgow since 2009. His recent moving-image projects explore social and ecological narratives in specific places, drawing on methodologies such as oral history recording, local history, speculative storytelling, and collage. Black served on the committee of Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, in 2016 and 2017, and is the recipient of the 2021 Margaret Tait Award; with a new commission forthcoming as part of this award.
Framing
This edition comes with a custom frame made from ash, a tree native to Scotland, intended to encapsulate the plant detritus as it detaches from the paper surface over time. Framing of this work is done on demand and may take several weeks.
For enquiries and further options relating to shipping and framing of this work please contact onlineshop@dca.org.ukOwn Art
Spread the cost of buying artwork with Own Art and purchase Bottom of the Loch by Andrew Black in 10 monthly payments of £56.40 (representative 0% APR). Email onlineshop@dca.org.uk for more information or to buy.
