TIMELINE
29.01.16 - 04.03.16
Timeline is an exhibition of three artists specialising in etching, Liz K Miller, Ian Chamberlain and Victoria Arney, exploring the ways that contemporary etchers use this specialist and historical process to create work that combines graphic, symmetry and concept to represent form and time in a temporal and evocative way.
Each etching is taken from a form of architecture, be it within cities, monuments or our natural surroundings. Etching traditionally involves the application of acid to cut a metal surface to produce a design but as this exhibition shows, more recent methods include a number of variations on this technique.
From conception to execution the process of etching requires skill, precision and inventiveness, alongside thoughtfulness in exploring their subject. The result in all three artists works are finished pieces that denote the process, both of the artist’s area of investigation and method of production.
Liz K. Miller is best known for visual scores, inspired by original compositions, Miller maps sound and notation to create new circular scores, which respond to pitch, dynamic and repeating motifs. This work ‘The Frozen Lake Suite,’ a collaboration with architect Howard Miller, depicts a city build on the edge of a frozen lake and the architecture of the process of city growth within this environment. Liz K. Miller studied at Edinburgh College of Art and University of the Arts London. She began a three-year print fellowship at the Royal Academy Schools in 2013. Miller recently undertook a residency at Spike Island in Bristol, UK. Her work is held in the Tate Print Collection and the British Library.
Victoria Arney works with prints and drawings that consider invisibility, memory and disruption of nature. She works with photographs of sites that she visits and uses Japanese chine collé techniques of overlaying colour. The theme of natural events changing the order of landscapes leads Arney to focus on and depict the power of nature. Arney's work is both dramatic and fragile; often featuring overlaid coloured disks of Japanese paper or semi-transparent washes of pastel colour. Arney lives and works in France, having graduated from Camberwell College of Arts MA Printmaking 2012 with distinction. She has also won the Bainbridge Award, Oaksmith Prize and the Ardizzone award.
Ian Chamberlain is a Bristol based artist whose work takes influence from manmade structures. Ian’s work aims to reinterpret these manmade structures as monuments placed within the landscape. These structures in turn then become monuments of their time. Ian is interested in the use of a traditional print process such as etching being used to record subject matter that is generally at the cutting edge of technology for its time. The fact that etching methods have not significantly altered for over 500 years adds to Ian’s interest in recording new technology with such a traditional process.
Ian has a long-standing fascination with technology and architectural forms, these have included structures within industry, agriculture, science and the military. The work now aims to become a visual historical document and record of places that he has visited. Ian has exhibited Nationally and Internationally including London, Hong Kong, New York, Barcelona and Berlin.
He is also a Senior Lecturer at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Where he teaches onto the M.A Printmaking Course and BA (Hons) Drawing and print course.
