Depictions of Light

 

Ghosts of the Past.  Helen Malone 2016

In 2016 I made a book called The Legacy of Silence which was about the search for knowledge about our personal past and our ancestors.

The book begins with the words -  I stand in darkness peering into silence and on the second page - looking for ghosts of the past and traces of vanished lives.

I created a print for the second page which showed shadowy fragmented light in the background with the foreground purely black and blocking the viewer from entering the image.  My intention was to create the suggestion of a vital living past that was not accessible to the viewer.

          Last year I received the gift of a beautiful small print made by my friend Susan Goddard.  What a fantastic print and depiction of light it is.

The drive home...down the bush track, at night. Susan Goddard  No 14/15

The viewer experiences the feeling of being in the car in the bush with the headlights piercing into the darkness and lighting up fragments of the close trees and surrounds whilst the background remains black and impenetrable.

I decided to hang these two prints together in my room and was immediately struck by the interesting way light has been utilised in these prints.  In both the viewer is peering into the darkness. However the intention is quite opposite - in one the foreground is well lit and the background impenetrable and in the other the foreground is dark and closed off with the suggestion of  unreachable life and light in the background.  

I enjoy seeing them both hanging together and am constantly fascinated by these two images, their similarities and differences.

An Al-Mutanabbi Street Collaboration

The Presence and Absence of the Light

I participated in the Artists Book section of ‘Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here’  Project with a book called ‘Absence’ and when the call came out for the printmaking project called ‘Absence and Presence’ I was delighted to have the opportunity to explore this idea of the destruction 

of culture further.

  

I spoke to an artist friend, Jack Oudyn, with whom I  have collaborated on projects in the past, and who also intensely supports the rights of freedom of speech and democracy.  We felt that if we collaborated on the print we would be making a statement about support and solidarity between artists, particularly our fellow artists under threat in Iraq.  After much thought and discussions about freedom of speech, around the time of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, France, we started work on the print.  Since that time there have also been reports of the destruction and burning of books in Mosul in Iraq.

The print is a combination of two prints, the first is a linocut of an Islamic screen which has openings to let in the light of the world, culture and literature, and others that are blocked by an aggressive arrow pointed shape moving across the screen.

The second digital print of abstract asemic writing underlies the first print.  It also contains the jumbled letters of the words Al Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, but only fragments of the print are visible through the openings in the screen, and these letters do not appear in their entirety in the displayed print.

The composite print has a 3D element in that the openings in part of the screen have shutters (or perhaps book covers) that need to be opened when the print is on display.

Five of the edition of  ten prints of  The Presence and Absence of the Light are on their way to the United Kingdom and the United States for inclusion in the 'Absence and Presence' exhibitions held as part of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Project.