THE PRINT OUT

Imprint can be read in two ways — a physical mark-making technique in which something hard is pressed into a surface to leave an impression, or, to fix an event or experience so firmly in memory so that it cannot be forgotten. The exhibition constantly moves between these two ideas. After is at once the experimental possibilities that emerge as the artists in the show depart from the limits of formal printmaking and explore different surfaces, textures and materials. After is also a consideration of printing as an act of creating memory. Paper and other surfaces here become the carrier of memory, which the artists each choose to perform, disrupt, or re-write in their own way. 

Rajyashri Goody’s expansive practice uses multiple mediums but consistently focuses on social histories of India and the exclusion of Dalit narratives. In her present work, Goody re-appropriates pages from the Manusmriti, a 2nd century BC Hindu law text which is discriminatory in nature, particularly towards lower castes and women. Turning the paper into pulped sculptural forms, Goody attempts to negate the power of both the Manusmriti and of the written word. Also looking at paper as a carrier of memory, Bhasha Chakrabarti presents two different bodies of work which showcase her interest in the act of repair and mending. Using found materials such as packaging, wrapping papers and old fabrics, Chakrabarti employs methods of darning, mending and pasting to restore low value materials that would otherwise be likely to be discarded. 

Elena Pereira is a conceptual artist who uses combines art, design and performance to create objects which bring different materials into conversation with each other. Showcasing a varied body of work including resin-cast sculptures of found tissues and handkerchiefs, wallpaper sheets hand-blocked with different wildflower blooms, and a performative gesture inviting audience members to partake in a collective ‘memory’ meal — the core of Pereira’s practice is in the idea of creating an archive of residue. 

As a point of departure, Chetnaa’s minimal abstractions explore print as a constant relationship between dark and light, black and white, negative and positive. Chetnaa is an artist who’s practice focuses on the graphic quality of a line as a series of connecting points, and the negative spaces within them as a collection of shadows. In this new body of work, Chetnaa explores the relationship between these dichotomies by creating imprints of negative space into space, as is seen in her delicate white-on-white embossed paper works.

Through their varied creative styles, their interpretations and intervention into well documented processes of paper-pulp making, lithography and the printing press, cyanotype, block printing, flower print, and blind embossing,  the artists participating in Imprint, After introduce a range of forms, techniques, and conceptual ideas which allow the audience to expand their interpretation of what contemporary printmaking can be.