Serious Play | Adventures in Abstraction Through Print

The premise of Hayter’s argument was that the printmaking process was intrinsically suited to an exploration of abstraction. Making a print demands the deconstruction of an idea into its constituent formal parts: line, tone, colour, texture and then challenges the artist to navigate between these elements to construct an image, layer upon layer until a final outcome is arrived at. This would clearly have exciting implications for any artist interested in abstraction however printmaking’s potential for the unexpected – the ‘happy accident’ – that puts complete control of the image just out of reach adds another rich dimension. Print is a capricious artform and while this might be considered by some artists to have alarming implications for creative control, in the right hands, it is an exciting provocation to the artistic imagination. When aligned to the almost infinite variety of mark-making that printmaking allows, the prospect opens up to explore an image that ‘grows’ organically rather than simply marching towards a pre-conceived idea. The process itself therefore becomes the artwork with exciting possibilities for the adventurous artist that painting alone cannot deliver to the same degree. As Hayter put it with his characteristic relish: “I feel that in undertaking any graphic work, the artist places himself in a position to allow miracles to happen to him.”   

 

Serious Play is an examination of how different artists harnessed a wide variety of printmaking techniques to deepen their investigations into abstraction. It is story of creative discovery and one which was often conducted in the company of Master printmakers who flourished during the period; highly skilled specialists such as Nigel Oxley, Stanley Jones, Kip Gresham and Robert Dutrou who could navigate the mysteries of carborundum, aquatint, silkscreen, lithography and help chart new territory for these techniques.

 

The show features works spanning the late 1950s to the present day from artists including Joan Miró, Barbara Hepworth, Patrick Heron, Victor Pasmore, John Hoyland, Terry Frost and Barrington Tobin.