Hogarth Reprinted: Two Stories (screen print)

Lucy Skaer

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About the edition

This new series of six prints began with Skaer’s own photographs of first-edition books produced by Virginia and Leonard Woolf at their Hogarth Press. The Hogarth Press was born from the rejection by the Woolfs of the dominance of commercial publishing and printing, and a desire to reclaim the means of production. The book covers were made in traditional hand-craft processes such as marbling, paste-papermaking and painting, largely by Vanessa Bell. Virginia would précis the books for Vanessa, and the consensus is that the covers successfully reflect and image the content. “They are, to borrow a phrase of Henry James’s, ‘optical echoes’ of the text” (Rosenbaum, 1995, p 22). To the Woolfs the content of the books was all-important, and although they thought the covers beautiful, they were also seen as an inexpensive covering option.

Skaer, however, has chosen to focus her attention on these ‘optical echoes’; the external appearance; and to judge the book by its cover, seeking to explore as many different processes as possible for each of six of them. The intention is not so much to reproduce the covers but to construct images of them in selected print-media that represent some quality of their appearance. Processes used combine CNC laser- and router-cutting, screenprinting, etching, paper-pulp-printing and digital pigment print. As in Skaer’s previous practice she became: ‘…interested in finding several examples of the same type of image and treating them in slightly different pictorial ways’ In Skaer’s words ‘I became more interested in untying a systemic body of things – a set of things – by the handling of them.’ (Bradley. 2008 p 10)

Skaer is said to make ‘images that tell us primarily about imagery’ (F. Bradley 2008, p 9) Taking images rather than objects as her starting point, she works schematically and according to her own constructed systems. Methods include reconstructions with complex, self-derived drawing and printing processes.

Related Work

Part of a suite of six prints:

Suite of all six Hogarth Reprinted prints can be bought for £7,500 inc. VAT (unframed). Please select before adding to basket.

Year 2014
Edition of 10
Media One colour screenprint on Atsu-Shi 67gsm paper and mounted by chine-collé on Somerset Satin White 310gsm paper
Dimensions 112 x 76cm
Signature Signed, numbered and dated by artist

About Lucy Skaer

Lucy Skaer was born in Cambridge in 1975. She completed her BA at the Glasgow School of Art. From 1997 Skaer co-founded the collaborative group Henry VIII’s Wives, and worked at Transmission gallery in Glasgow, where she had her first solo show in 2000. In 2003 Skaer was short-listed for the art prize Becks Futures and exhibited at the first Scottish presentation at the Venice Biennale, where she also presented in 2007.

Skaer’s solo presentations include a mid-career retrospective at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, ‘The Siege’ at the Chisenhale (both 2008) and a major show at Kunsthalle Basel 2009, for which she was nominated for the Turner Prize. Her most recent solo exhibition ‘Exit, Voice, Loyality’ was at Tramway, Glasgow from Oct – Dec. 2013. Skaer lives and works in Glasgow.

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