A Walk to the Studio: I
Sixty Four Stopcock Box Lids
screenprint
edition of 50
paper size 100 x 72 cm
1976-7
Notes on this work
The first in the series shows all the stopcock-box-lids between my house in Grove Park SE5 and my studio in Talfourd Road SE15. Their skull like shape aided by the degradations of time and wear link them with masks and the classical Memento Mori images, the ikons of mortality.
From the initial 35mm black and white photographs of the lids which I took in May 76, the making of the print occupied three months. It involved blowing these photos up and aligning the bromide enlargements on to a single sheet which itself was then rephotographed in various line and tone separations: the original bromides were then coloured by me with photographic tinting inks according to colour notes I had made in the street.
From these colours and from other pencil indications the printer, Bernard Cook, was able to capture all the subtle time, weather and accident wrought variations in the sixty-four-stopcock-box-lids using twenty-six colours (plus an overall colour and the printed text).
From the initial 35mm black and white photographs of the lids which I took in May 76, the making of the print occupied three months. It involved blowing these photos up and aligning the bromide enlargements on to a single sheet which itself was then rephotographed in various line and tone separations: the original bromides were then coloured by me with photographic tinting inks according to colour notes I had made in the street.
From these colours and from other pencil indications the printer, Bernard Cook, was able to capture all the subtle time, weather and accident wrought variations in the sixty-four-stopcock-box-lids using twenty-six colours (plus an overall colour and the printed text).